by Uri Heitner
There never used to be any dispute between Right and Left about Israel's status as the national homeland of the Jewish people. In the past decade, the Left has adopted a post-Zionist narrative.
The
nation-state bill had its inception at the Institute for Zionist
Strategies over a decade ago. In light of the growing schism in the
Israeli public, the disputes over the borders, the settlements, peace,
and security, the law was designed to rally all Zionist layers around a
broad, shared agreement that the essence of the country is – regardless
of its borders – as the national home of the Jewish people. The bill was
designed to reaffirm the principles expressed in Israel's Declaration
of Independence, which all streams of Zionism have in common, despite
their disagreements.
The original version of the bill went much
farther than the current wording, which was softened over the years.
Former (and soon to be again) Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni was offered
the chance to present the bill to the Knesset. She was enthusiastic.
Later, she got cold feet, possibly skittering sideways to her voter
base, and reversed her position. Now she is a major opponent of the law,
even in its watered-down version. But Livni isn't the issue; her
opposition to the bill is a symptom of the sad story of the Zionist Left
over the past decade.
At first, the bill generated objection on
the grounds that it was unnecessary and restated what was obvious.
Gradually, the opposition to the bill morphed into a foreign ideology
that denigrated Zionism. The post-Zionist poison that sees a
contradiction between Israel being both a Jewish and a democratic state
took root among the Zionist Left, to the point where it started
characterizing the bill as an attack on the democratic nature of the
country.
According to this message, the Jewish and
democratic elements are opposites, and there is a zero-sum game in which
the more Jewish the country is, the less democratic it becomes, and
vice versa – in opposition to Zionist reasoning, according to which
"Jewish" and "democratic" are integral elements in the nature of the
state.
Suddenly, the Left has turned the most
basic truths of Zionism and the Declaration of Independence into
"nationalism," if not "racism."
"We hereby declare the establishment of a
Jewish state in the land of Israel, to be known as the State of Israel" –
is this definition, the very core of the Declaration of Independence,
unacceptable? Nationalist? Racist? Could this declaration have been made
today? How did the Labor movement, which throughout its history was
devoted to Jewish settlement in Israel, start taking aim at Jewish
settlement, which it suddenly started seeing as "racist"?
This law doesn't entail even the slightest
harm to the country's democratic character, or the rights and status of
the Arabs of Israel. True, the law does not spell out the rights of
minorities, because that is not its subject. The law is not an entire
constitution, merely one constitutional pillar. The constitutional basic
laws anchor the individual rights of all citizens of Israel, regardless
of religion or ethnicity. The nation-state law focuses on Israel being
the national home of the Jewish people.
I'm not happy that this important piece of
legislation has passed because the law, which was designed to express a
consensus about Zionism, met with opposition from nearly half of all
Knesset members. The Zionist Union and Yesh Atid's stance against the
bill is a kind of an eclipse. The Labor party's foundations are getting
shaky.
Uri Heitner
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-eclipse-of-the-zionist-left/
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