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Shir Hever of TRNN explains that Israel's new law of the nation-state makes it impossible to claim that Israel is a democracy. Unequal rights are recognized by the government as the essence of the state.
Shir Hever is an economist at the Alternative Information Center, an Israeli-Palestinian organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. It studies the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and is particularly interested in the international aid to the Palestinians and Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. on the Israeli economy, boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. His work also includes lectures and presentations on the economics of the profession. His first book: The Political Economy of the Israeli Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation, was published by Pluto Press.
TRNN video & transcription:
SHARMINI PERIES: Â This is the Real News Network. I am Sharmini Peries, coming from Baltimore. In the early morning hours on Thursday, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a controversial law: the law of the nation-state. Prime Minister Netanyahu pleaded for this bill, which was originally proposed in 2011. The bill was passed just before the Knesset enters its summer holidays. Now, the state of Israel does not have a constitution, but rather a series of basic laws that form the basis of the Israeli legal system. This fundamental law will declare the state of Israel as belonging to the Jewish nation, and will place Hebrew as the only official language; and he will put the concept of the Jewish state above the concept of democracy. The Palestinian and Jewish opposition party, the United List, drafted an alternative bill last month calling for a democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens. But surprise, the Knesset Presidium has banned the vote of the bill, explaining that the bill threatens the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Now the Presidium has only banned three bills in history. d & # 39; Israel. This is how Netanyahu introduced the law just a day before the vote.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The law of the nation-state; a very important law. And I hope that if it is not in the next few hours, then in the next few days, as we have already said, we will adopt this law, which is very important, to ensure the basis of our existence, which is Israel as a nation state of the Jewish people.
SHARMINI PERIES: Â What is it? Now Prime Minister Netanyahu has had four election victories for the prime minister. But for this next election, he has very little to do. Does this law, adopted in the early hours of the morning without much debate, have something to do with that? Well, join me now to discuss all this is Shir Hever. He is our TRNN correspondent based in Heidelberg, Germany. Shir, good to have with us
SHIR HEVER: Thanks for having me, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Shir, let's start with what this bill is. Why was it presented at the moment, and very, very little debate took place. But Netanyahu managed to get him through.
SHIR HEVER: Â Well, actually, there was a lot of debate during the introduction of the bill in 2011. And there was a lot of opposition, because the bill is very undemocratic, and it changes the balance, the very delicate balance, that the Israeli government has tried unsuccessfully to maintain since the founding of the state between the concept of a Jewish state and democracy. And in truth, Israel has never been a democracy. But he could still claim to be. And the problem with this bill, for the Israeli parliament and for the Israeli government, is that the pretext is gone. Now it is very clear that Israel is a Jewish state first, and a democracy later, if at all.
And that's really what this bill is about, because it does not really change much. terms of the legislation. It focuses mainly on symbolic problems. And the fact, for example, of declaring Hebrew as their only language, or the only official language, is again a question of symbolism. It's not so much about how government practices are about to change. But it is a clear statement to the citizens of Israel who are not Jewish, you are now second class citizens. And it is a clear statement of the world, Israel is first and foremost a Jewish state and it is only a democracy to the extent that the supremacy of the Jews is not handed over in question.
PERMES SHARMINI: Â ] Now, the United List proposed another bill that would have guaranteed equal rights for all citizens of Israel. If this bill was so popular in the Knesset, why did the Praesidium decide to ban it?
SHIR HEVER: Â I think what the United List did with his bill. They also knew that this bill would not get the majority. If there was a majority in the Israeli Knesset to have a democracy, then Israel would have been a democracy at the present time. But they introduced this bill because they wanted this vote to be open to all. They wanted to have a list of all members of the Israeli Knesset who raised their hands and voted against equal rights for all citizens. And of course, the Israeli members of the Knesset do not want to raise their hands and admit that they reject the idea of equal rights.
But it's really a question about how this debate in Israel is so different from the debate out there. In Israel, the concept of a state of all its citizens, which is in the platform of the United List, a state of all its citizens, is taboo. This is considered a challenge to the very existence of the state as a Jewish state. And that's exactly what the Presidium said. They said that the United List was trying to end Israel as a Jewish state by promoting the state of all its citizens. When we talk about this, of any other, in any country except Israel, the idea of the state of all its citizens seems to be a basic requirement for democracy. Citizens should own the state.
And that is, I think, really the question of, this question of translation is also how many international media miss the point about the state-nation law. Because the name "law of the nation state" is not the correct translation of Hebrew. The correct translation should be "the law of the nation". One thing this law ensures is that Israel is not a nation-state. The nation-state is a state like all states in Europe, for example, where there is complete overlap between citizens and the nation. And everyone who belongs to the French nation is a citizen of France, and vice versa. This is not the case in Israel. Israel is not the state of the Israeli nation because an Israeli nation does not exist. The Israeli Supreme Court of 2013 made it clear that it did not recognize an Israeli nation or nationality. He only recognized Jewish nationality. And that means that citizens of Israel who are not Jewish can not be equal citizens. And so it is not a nation-state, and it should actually be called the law of the nation.
SHARMINI PERIES: Shir, in March of last year the UN issued a report that accused Israel of implementing an apartheid regime. In fact, this bill does exactly that. Now, following this report that the United States had done, the US had been pushing for the report to be censored by Secretary General Antonio Guterres. And one of the most important issues in this report was that kind of separation between citizens and the rights of citizenship, and the national rights that we have as a citizen of a country . As I said, this new law does exactly that. Do you think this means that the US report was simply ignored by Israeli leaders? And they had to know what was in it.
SHIR HEVER: Â I actually think that the law was not passed in 2011 but was passed now because of the UN report, and because of growing accusations of apartheid. Let's not forget that in South Africa, during the time of apartheid, the government has not tried to argue that it does not exist there. had no apartheid in South Africa. They were very open about it. And that's what we see in Israel too. They are very open about it. They just do not call it Afrikaans, apartheid. They use the Hebrew word hafrada. But they are equivalent to the same thing. And it's actually a law that has been passed on by fear. It was transmitted for fear that Israeli propaganda aimed at the world to say such lies that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and that is the kind of propaganda that worries the Israelis, oh, can -be the non-government Israel's Jewish citizens, Palestinian citizens of Israel, will exploit this propaganda and say oh, you say you are a democracy, so we demand equal rights .
So, to answer these accusations of apartheid, the answer to the Israeli Knesset and the response of the Israeli government is yes, we are apartheid. That's exactly what will happen. We want to make sure that the state of Israel does not belong to its citizens, that it belongs to the Jewish people, wherever it is. And the Jewish people are not necessarily citizens of Israel. About half of the world's Jews do not live in Israel. But now, the state of Israel belongs to them even more than belongs to those who have lived on the land of Israel for many generations. But now, their own country does not really belong to them. And it's really the very essence of apartheid
SHARMINI PERIES: Â And as for the real implications of this law, how would that change the how do people live in Israel and exercise their democratic will?
SHIR HEVER: Well, here I think it seems like the law is not going to change anything. Because when they say, for example, that Hebrew is the only official language, in practice Hebrew is the only official language. Israeli institutions and public institutions refuse to use Arabic, which was an official language of Israel until today. And they insist on speaking Hebrew and publishing everything in Hebrew. And there is also a clause in this law that says the government will promote Jewish communities, or Jewish settlement, which is another form of apartheid; Exclusively Jewish communities, exclusively Jewish settlements. And it is also something that has been done for decades, and it is not new. The fact that it now appears in the law is just a way for the government to say that it is our policy, and we will continue and no, no longer try to pretend that we are in fact a democracy where Palestinians can
So, in that sense, I do not think that there will be a lot of change. But I think this kind of very aggressive speech that the government is making, openly calling for Jewish supremacy and racist legislation, is something that affects the whole political discourse in Israel, and the whole atmosphere. When you tell Palestinian citizens that you have no hope, you were born Palestinian, you were not born Jewish, so you will never be equal in this country. Then, of course, they understand that their only path to equality is resistance and protest. They can not hope that one day their rights will be granted to them. And it's a big difference.
And I think with this new-. Or not new, but certainly intensified feelings of racism and discrimination, it is not surprising that we see a lot of other laws popping up on the periphery. And while everyone was talking about the national law as the main legislative measure of the current government, they legislated other laws very discreetly, one of them denying the rights of homosexual couples to adopt. And the other is a law that prevents Palestinians from appealing to the Supreme Court. So, they will only be, only to be allowed to appeal to the regional court. And this is to prevent them from demanding compensation when their property or their lives are damaged or destroyed by the Israeli army. This is how this law changes the lives of people living in Israel and Palestine.
PERMES SHARMINI: Devastating law, stipulating that Palestinians will remain second and third class citizens in Israel. Shir, thank you very much for joining us today
SHIR HEVER: Thank you
SHARMINI PERIES: Â And thank you for joining us here The real network of news .
Opinion / Analysis 18/07/18: How Israel silences Palestine in European circles
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