[ad_1]
That handles and denunciations begin. On Thursday, Israel finally expressed in constitutional law the fundamental achievement of Zionism: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. In the seven years that have pbaded since the new provision was proposed, it has sparked an outcry from the United States and Europe. Foreign politicians demanded that Israel not enact the law, and they were not appeased by the removal of most of its disputed provisions. A Monday title to Foreign Policy warned that Israel was "debating democracy." Arab members of the Knesset tore up copies of the bill after its adoption. It was called "the official beginning of fascism and apartheid".
In reality, Israel's Basic Law would not be irrelevant among liberal democratic constitutions of Europe – which include similar provisions that have not aroused controversy. The law does not affect the individual rights of any Israeli citizen, including the Arabs; it does not create individual privileges either. Illegality here rests on critics of the law, who would deny the Jewish state the freedom to legislate as a normal country.
The law of the nation-state states that Israel is a country established to instantiate the right of the Jewish people to determination. It constitutionalizes the symbols of this goal – the national anthem, the holidays, and so on. There is nothing undemocratic or even unusual about it. Of the European states, seven have similar "national" constitutional provisions.
Consider the Slovak Constitution, which begins with the words "We, the Slovak nation", and claims "the natural right of nations to self-determination." Some provisions are found in places like the Baltic countries, which have large, alienated minority populations. The Latvian Constitution opens by invoking "the unwavering will of the Latvian nation to have its own state and its inalienable right to self-determination in order to guarantee the existence and development of the nation". Latvian, its language and its culture through the centuries ". the population is about 25% Russian.
The new Basic Law also establishes Hebrew, the main language of 80% of the population of Israel, as the official language. Previously, Israel relied on a provision of the British Mandate on Maintenance which gave official status to Hebrew, Arabic and English. Far from compromising democracy, the Basic Law brings Israel into line with other Western nations. Most states of the European Union, multiethnic and multilingual, grant official status only to the majority language. The Spanish Constitution, for example, makes Castilian Spanish the official national language and requires all citizens to know it, even if their mother tongue is Basque or Catalan.
Another controversial provision of the law states that "the development of Jewish settlement" is a national value that the government should promote. It is understood that it is to encourage the dispersion of the population in the periphery of the country. This reaffirms essentially the policy adopted by the international community in 1922 in the mandate of the League of Nations for Palestine, which aimed at "encouraging". . . Again, the provision is only declaratory of values, and does not prescribe or authorize any particular policy. In contrast, the state constitution of Hawaii authorizes land policies to promote homesteading by Hawaiians and provides them with preferential land policies.
Moreover, the measure fits in a context of discriminatory land policies towards the Jews. The Israeli Supreme Court has controversially ruled that Arabs have the right to create residential communities in Israel that exclude Jews. A separate case denied the right corresponding to the Jews. In Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority prescribes the death penalty for Arabs who sell land to Jews. The new Basic Law does not even deny one or the other of these injustices; this only creates a normative counterweight.
Israel does not have an official religion either, and nothing in the new Basic Law changes that. In this respect, Israel is more liberal than the seven European countries with constitutionally consecrated state religions.
Perhaps the best evidence that Israel needs a constitutional affirmation of its status as a sovereign Jewish nation-state is the impatience of so many denouncing as considered anti-democratic measures as bbad elsewhere.
Dr. Kontorovich is a researcher at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think-tank that supported the nation-state bill.
Source link
