By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO–The news that Israel’s Knesset is considering a new “Basic Law” purifying what makes the nation a Jewish state is both disheartening and bewildering. The proposed twelfth Basic Law, filed in recent weeks, collects all the basic elements of Israeli society—including its Hebrew language, national anthem, banner, and calendar—concretizing all of these into a definitive and prohibitive declaration of the state’s professed exclusive Jewish character.
Nothing more redundant and provocative could be promulgated by Israel’s parliament. The stated rationalization for the Basic Laws, namely the absence of a national constitution, is in this case disingenuous. Sadly, the proposed law betrays a troubling elitism among its supporters directed against non-Jews living in this historic democracy that rose as a noble response to the greatest racial genocide of the 20th century.
This bill would systemically discriminate against non-Jews and this is exactly what the world’s only Jewish state should not do if it is to remain true to itself. It would restrict Israeli Arabs’ access to housing, certain villages and towns, and to full judicial process. It even would rescind the original status of Arabic as Israel’s official second language. What Israel’s founders conceived with an eye towards inclusiveness would be blinded.
History, blood, and the 75% of the country’s indigenous population that is Jewish already define the ethnic makeup of Israel. What this little bit of statutory maliciousness directed at the significant Arab and Christian minorities that live in Israel does is simply to deepen the divisions and chafing that exist among Israel’s overall population of about seven million. As an Israeli-born son of two veterans of Israel’s War of Independence, I am saddened by the very discussion and the attendant sense of insecurity or just plain meanness.
The wording of this law is deliberately complex and ultimately incendiary. According to one leading American Jewish publication, its language would give courts “license to affirm a law or practice deemed to support Israel’s Jewish character even if it violated democratic norms.”
When I attended grade school in the village of Kfar-Saba, near Tel Aviv, the fundamentally democratic, egalitarian spirit of our young state was as second-nature as the trees we planted and the Hebrew we spoke. Yes, Israel had enemies—this was nothing new in the Jewish saga. But there was no grouping within our land of “the other.” We had been “the other” in Europe.
Up till now, Israel’s Supreme Court has intermittently revoked acts of legislation that clearly diminished or threatened general civil liberties in the nation. In some cases, the judicial branch represented the only recourse for minorities who were clearly being marginalized by legislative attempts to co-opt their rudimentary rights as citizens. This new Basic Law would even sideline the Supreme Court’s power to maintain civil justice.
In just sixty-three years of existence, Israel has become a beacon and inspiration of scientific, academic, and entrepreneurial achievement for all freedom-loving nations in the world. Its citizens maintain high spirits and uncensored values in spite of an unyielding and grim atmosphere of terrorism and existential security concerns.
But this is not a matter of security; it is a matter of integrity. Israel has more than enough problems forced upon it from the outside world. It does not need to create another one on its own.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com