by Dror Eydar
The much-debated nation-state law, which defines Israel's status as the homeland of the Jewish people, is the answer to the constitutional revolution that took away the Jews' national identity in Israel
1.
"What are you afraid of?" The opponents of
the recently passed nation-state law, which enshrines Israel's status as
the nation-state of the Jewish people, keep asking. They callously
dismiss the fears of the Jewish majority in Israel. After all, we, the
Jews, have a long history of devastation – two national destructions,
hundreds of wars against foreign invaders, two exiles (one of them
lasting hundreds of years and including the expulsion of Jews from
almost every place they sought to settle) and one Holocaust. Does that
not justify a healthy dose of fear?
Even after the establishment of the State
of Israel, the persecution didn't end. I'll put it another way: People
who aren't afraid may not have the best grasp on reality.
2.
Regardless, fear is not the motivation
behind the nation-state law. The chief motivation driving this
legislation is the understanding that over the last 25 years, the
balance between the legislature and the judiciary in Israel has been
upset.
Until today, we naively went to the polls
and believed that our vote would decide our future. We believed that our
vote would be deciding factor. Societies are made up of so many
different groups with so many different beliefs, how do people decide a
society's future? We get together in one place, agree on the rules of
the game and take a vote. Majority rules. Once upon a time, this was
done in the marketplace or the agora, but today, it is the Knesset or
parliament.
But one day, we discovered that someone had
changed the rules. It's not the public that decides, by way of elected
representatives, but rather a small unauthorized group that simply
seized the power to decide our future based on their values. The letter
of the law has long ceased to guide our Supreme Court. The court
interprets the law and adapts it to its own views, or, more accurately,
to what the court believes the law should be, even if the legislature
legislated otherwise.
3.
How did this happen? It became possible
thanks to former Chief Justice Aharon Barak's constitutional revolution.
He turned Israel's Basic Laws into a constitution-to-be, and with years
of legal interpretation, destroyed the equal footing shared by Israel's
Jewish identity and its democracy. Within the confines of the court,
Israel's Jewish identity became nothing more than declarative, a thin
idea that mainly adapts itself to universal values, as understood by the
Supreme Court justices, and only them.
4.
For many years, we have been disappointed
by the court. The nation-state law is an attempt at redemption.
Ironically, the forefathers of this law are in fact Aharon Barak and his
faction. The citizens of Israel, by way of their elected
representatives, are trying to restore some of the freedom they once
had, before the court decided to educate us. I have reiterated this
point many times: The Supreme Court justices, including Aharon Barak,
are no better than we are at understanding values. Their job description
does not include telling us what is good and what is bad, or defining
for us what is true. All we've ever asked of them is to rule according
to the law – to decide whether one act or another complies with or
violates the existing, written law.
But they, in turn, adopted Plato's
Republic, in which the philosopher king rules over the ignorant masses.
They found a clever way to impose a tyranny of the minority over the
majority. The nation-state law was designed to slightly rectify this
gross imbalance. Judicial activism is guided by hubris and aggression –
the belief that you understand better than others what is worthy and the
aggressive tendency to dismiss the will of the voters. Basic Law:
Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, as it is known by its
official name, offers the tools to restore some of the eroded Jewish
identity.
5.
One proposal, to make the Declaration of
Independence a law that would replace the nation-state law, is a joke.
It is about as laughable as the nondescript, toothless nation-state
bills submitted by Likud MK Benny Begin and by Yesh Atid leader Yair
Lapid after him. It would be impotent and ineffectual. Neither here nor
there, just like the general image that Yesh Atid is trying to sell the
voters. Behind this proposal lies the strong will to perpetuate Barak's
constitutional revolution, preserve the Supreme Court's power, dictate
the public's values and keep the Knesset weak. The desired equality
already exists – in individual and civil rights. Everyone is equal
before the law.
6.
But when it comes to defining the State of
Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people (or the state of the
nation of Israel, but in this instance they are one and the same) –
there is no equality. As a rule, equality is a relative matter, and it
lends itself to interpretation. Each person has his own idea of
equality. If the world "equality" were to be inserted into the
nation-state law, gradually, like in the case of the constitutional
revolution, the Aharon Barak school of thought might very well use it to
strike down the Law of Return as failing to comply with the criteria of
equality. Watch how leftists like Meretz and parts of the Labor party
already have trouble talking proudly about Zionism – just think what
would happen if we were trying to legislate the Law of Return today.
For the hundredth time, I repeat my call:
Please read the nation-state law as it is written. It will be the best
antidote for the propaganda that has been mounted against it.
7.
The exaggerated overuse of the words
"racist," "fascist," "apartheid" and worse to describe the nation-state
law hasn't convinced its supporters to reconsider. On the contrary, the
public knows it isn't racist. The more the Left waves these accusations
around, the more it will distance itself from the general public. The
public, in turn, increasingly despises the accusatory Left. Thus, the
Left perpetuates its political defeat. A healthy public will never vote
for the camp that scorns it. Moreover, now that the nation-state law has
drawn a clear line between its supporters and detractors, it is plain
to see who has jumped on the anti-Zionist bandwagon, be it willingly or
unwittingly, and denies the Jews' exclusive right to their land.
These deniers not only reject our right to
the land, but they also deny our national identity. For years, the Arabs
have argued that the Jews are part of a religion, not a nation. The
global Left and its radical supporters in Israel claim that the Jewish
national identity is a modern invention from the 19th century. The truth
is that the European national identity was actually inspired by the
national identity of the Israelites in the Bible.
8.
It is clear to anyone with a sound mind
that the issue here is not race. The Jewish people have a right to
self-determination in their only historical homeland. People who despise
their enemy – an enemy who seeks to kill them and remove them from
their home – are not racists. They are normal human beings. We were here
long before Arab MKs Jamal Zahalka and Ahmad Tibi and Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
In the 7th century, the Islamic conqueror
arrived in the land of Israel. But even after the conquest, no other
national entity existed here. Zionism achieved true justice and restored
the Jewish people to Zion. In court, when human rights activists file
anti-national petitions against the Jews’ right to live as a nation in
their land, the human rights activists usually win. This suggests that
it is not "human" rights that the petitioners seek, but rather the
erosion of Jewish rights to their land and to self defense. The
nation-state law seeks to restore some of the justice to the Jews.
9.
When the Druze community became involved in
the debate, arguing that the nation-state law ignores their enormous
contribution to the state and brands them second class citizens as
non-Jews, they did themselves a grave disservice. There is no
correlation between the law, which speaks to the nationality issue, and
the ethnic and religious groups living in Israel, whose issue is
individual and civil rights. Riyad Ali, the prominent Druze journalist,
gave a moving, emotional speech on television, but it had nothing to do
with the law. By the same token he could have been a Mizrahi Jew
accusing the Ashkenazi Jews of mistreatment. That, too, would have
nothing to do with the nation-state law. Had there been a single
supporter of the law in that television studio, they could have handed
Ali a copy of the law and asked him: where are all these terrible things
you are accusing us of?
10.
The conversation about the nation-state law
is vital to our existence and to our future, because it touches on
deeply rooted issues that we have been repressing for years. For the
sake of the debate, it would be worthwhile to discuss the original
intent of the forefathers of Zionism, but not just. The fact is that we
have never been satisfied with just a limited vision of a "state for the
Jews." We have argued about the vision of the Jewish state for
generations.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/08/03/the-jews-deserve-justice-too/
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