Why Israel can't be a 'Jewish State'
1.6bn Muslims and 2.4bn Christians regard Jerusalem as holy, which is about 55 per cent of the world's population [EPA] |
The Israeli government's current mantra is that the
Palestinians must recognise a "Jewish State". Of course, the
Palestinians have clearly and repeatedly recognised the State of Israel
as such in the 1993 Oslo Accords (which were based on an Israeli promise
to establish a Palestinian state within five years - a promise now
shattered) and many times since. Recently, however, Israeli leaders have
dramatically and unilaterally moved the goal-posts and are now
clamouring that Palestinians must recognise Israel as a "Jewish State".
In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry concluded
that the demand for a "Jewish State" was not part of the obligations of
the Balfour Declaration or the British Mandate. Even in the First
Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, when Zionists sought to "establish a
home for the Jewish people", there was no reference of a "Jewish State".
The Zionist Organisation preferred at first to use the description
"Jewish homeland" or "Jewish Commonwealth". Many pioneering Zionist
leaders, such as Judah Magnes and Martin Buber also avoided the clear
and explicit term "Jewish State" for their project of a homeland for
Jews, and preferred instead the concept of a democratic bi-national
state.
Today, however, demands for a "Jewish State" from Israeli
politicians are growing without giving thought to what this might mean,
and its supporters claim that it would be as natural as calling France a
French State. However, if we consider the subject dispassionately, the
idea of a "Jewish State" is logically and morally problematic because of
its legal, religious, historical and social implications. The
implications of this term therefore need to be spelled out, and we are
sure that once they are, most people - and most Israeli citizens, we
trust - will not accept these implications.
Many implications
First, let us say that confusion immediately arises here
because the term "Jewish" can be applied both to the ancient race of
Israelites and their descendants, as well as to those who believe in and
practice the religion of Judaism. These generally overlap, but not
always. For example, some ethnic Jews are atheists and there are
converts to Judaism (leaving aside the question of whether these are
accepted as such by Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who are not ethnic Jews.
Second, let us suggest also that having a modern
nation-state being defined by one ethnicity or one religion is
problematic in itself - if not inherently self-contradictory - because
the modern nation-state as such is a temporal and civic institution, and
because no state in the world is - or can be in practice - ethnically
or religiously homogenous.
Third, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" implies
that Israel is, or should be, either a theocracy (if we take the word
"Jewish" to apply to the religion of Judaism) or an apartheid state (if
we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the ethnicity of Jews), or both,
and in all of these cases, Israel is then no longer a democracy -
something which has rightly been the pride of most Israelis since the
country's founding in 1948.
Fourth, at least one in five Israelis - 20 per cent of the
population, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics - is
ethnically Arab (and are mostly either Muslim, Christian, Druze or
Bahai), and recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" as such makes
one-fifth of the population of Israel automatically strangers in their
own native land and opens the door to legally reducing them, most
undemocratically, to second-class citizens (or perhaps even stripping
them of their citizenship and other rights) - something that no-one,
much less a Palestinian leader, has a right to do.
Fifth, recognising a "Jewish State" as such in Israel would
mean legally that while Palestinians no longer have citizens' rights
there, any member of world Jewry outside of Israel (up to 10 million
people perhaps), should be entitled to full citizens' rights there, no
matter wherever they may be in the world today and regardless of their
current nationality. Indeed, Israel publicly admits that it does not
hold the land for the benefit of its citizens but holds it, in trust, on
behalf of the Jews of the world for all time. This is something that
happens in practice, but that obviously Palestinians in the occupied
territories - including Jerusalem - do not see as fair, especially as
they are constantly forcibly evicted off their ancestral homeland by
Israel to make way for foreign Jewish settlers, and because Palestinians
in their diaspora are denied the same right to come and live.
Sixth, it means, before final status negotiations have even
started, that Palestinians would have then given up the rights of about
7 million Palestinians in the diaspora to repatriation or compensation;
7 million Palestinians descended from the Palestinians who in 1900
lived in historical Palestine (ie what is now Israel, the West Bank
including Jerusalem, and Gaza) and at that time made up 800,000 of its
840,000 inhabitants; and who were driven off their land through war,
violent eviction or fear.
Seventh, recognising a "Jewish state" in Israel - a state
which purports to annex the whole of Jerusalem, East and West, and calls
Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided capital" (as if the city, or even the
world itself, were eternal; as if it were really undivided, and as if
it actually were legally recognised by the international community as
Israel's capital) - means completely ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is
as holy to 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims, as it is to
15-20 million Jews worldwide.
In other words, this would be to privilege Judaism above
the religions of Christianity and Islam, whose adherents together
comprise 55 per cent of the world's population. Regrettably this is a
narrative propagated even by renowned Jewish author and Nobel laureate
Elie Wiesel, who, on April 15, 2010, took out full page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post
and claimed that Jerusalem "is mentioned more than six hundred times in
Scripture - and not a single time in the Qur'an". Now we do not propose
to speak for native Palestinian Arab Christians - except to say the
that Jerusalem is quite obviously the city of Jesus Christ the Messiah -
but as Muslims, we believe that Jerusalem is not the "third holiest
city of Islam" as is sometimes claimed, but simply one of Islam's three
holy cities. And, of course, despite what Mr Wiesel seems to believe,
Jerusalem is indeed clearly referred to in the Holy Qur'an in Surat
al-Isra' (17:1):
"Glorified be He Who transported His servant by night
from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Aqsa Place of Worship whose
precincts We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo!
He, only He, is the Hearer, the Seer."
Moreover, Muslims wanting to take a similar, religiously
exclusive narrative, could point out that while Jerusalem is mentioned
600 times in the Bible, it is not mentioned once in the Torah as such - a
fact that any Biblical Concordance will easily confirm. Of course we
do, however, recognise the importance of the land of Israel in the
religion of Judaism - this is even mentioned in the Qur'an, 5:21 - we
only ask that the Israeli government reciprocate this courtesy and allow
Muslims to speak for themselves in expressing what they consider, and
have always considered, as holy to them.
There is another reason, more serious than all of the seven
mentioned above, why Palestinian leaders - and indeed no responsible
person - can morally recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such. It
has to do with the very Covenant of God in the Bible with Ancient
Israelites of the promise of a homeland for Jews. God says to Abraham in
the Bible:
On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying:
"To your descendants I have given this land, from the
river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates - the Kenites,
the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the
Jebusites." (Genesis, 15:18-21; NKJ)
The ancient Israelites then go on to possess this land in the time of Moses, upon God's command, as follows:
"When the LORD your God brings you into the land
which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the
Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the
Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and
mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to
you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no
covenant with them nor show mercy to them. (Deuteronomy, 7:1-2; NKJ)
"Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan
today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than
yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and
tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you
heard it said: 'Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?' Therefore
understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you
as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before
you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD
has said to you." (Deuteronomy, 9:1-4; NKJ)
The fate of many of the original inhabitants is then as follows:
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the
edge of the sword. (Joshua, 6:21; NKJ)
And this continues even later on in time, as follows:
Samuel also said to Saul: "The LORD sent me to anoint
you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of
the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'I will punish
Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he
came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all
that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman,
infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Samuel,
15:1-3; NKJ)
Now it is very easy to cherry-pick quotes from scripture
permitting or enjoining violence. One could cite, out of context, verses
such as the "sword verse" in the Holy Qur'an:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the
idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and
lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and
establish prayer and pay the alms, then leave their way free. God is
Forgiving, Merciful. (Al-Tawbah, 9:5)
One could even cite verses - again out of context - from Jesus Christ's own words in the Gospel, as follows:
"But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.'" (Luke, 19:27; NKJ)"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew, 10:34; NKJ)
Democracy or a Jewish State?
Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament,
God commands the Jewish state in the land of Israel to come into being
through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants.
Moreover, this command has its roots in the very Covenant of God with
Abraham (or rather "Abram" at that time) in the Bible and it thus forms
one of the core tenets of Judaism as such, at least as we understand it.
No one then can blame Palestinians and descendents of the ancient
Canaanites, Jebusites and others who inhabited the land before the
Ancient Israelites (as seen in the Bible itself) for a little
trepidation as regards what recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means
for them, particularly to certain Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews. No
one then can blame Palestinians for asking if recognising Israel as a
"Jewish State" means recognising the legitimacy of offensive warfare or
violence against them by Israel to take what remains of Palestine from
them.
We need hardly say that this comes against a background
where every day the Israeli settler movement is grabbing more land in
the West Bank and Jerusalem (there are now 500,000 Israeli settlers in
the West Bank alone) - aided, abetted, funded and empowered by the
current Israeli government - and throwing or forcing more and more
Palestinians out, in so many different ways that it would take volumes
to describe. Moreover, there are credible reports that despite the
almost universal agreement in Rabbinical texts throughout the ages that
the divine command to kill the Amalekites was a unique and isolated
historical incident that applied only to the race of the Ancient
Amalekites, there are now, in certain religious schools in Israel,
people who draw parallels between the Palestinians of today and the
ancient Amalekites and their like (this was apparently the opinion of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief Rabbi of Israel; see also, for example: Shulamit Aloni's article 'Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness', CounterPunch, March, 8-9, 2003).
In short, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State" in
Israel is not the same as, say, recognition of Greece today as a
"Christian State". It entails, in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant
between God and a Chosen People regarding a Promised Land that should be
taken by force at the expense of the other inhabitants of the land and
of non-Jews. This idea is not present as such in other religions that we
know of. Moreover, even secular and progressive voices in Israel, such
as former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak,
understand the concept of a "Jewish State" as follows:
"[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people
… it is a state in which every Jew has the right to return … a Jewish
state derives its values from its religious heritage, the Bible is the
basic of its books and Israel's prophets are the basis of its morality …
a Jewish state is a state in which the values of Israel, Torah, Jewish
heritage and the values of the Jewish halacha [religious law] are the
bases of its values." ('A State in Emergency', Ha'aretz, 19 June, 2005.)
So, rather than demand that Palestinians recognise Israel
as a "Jewish State" as such - adding "beyond chutzpah" to insult and
injury - we offer the suggestion that Israeli leaders ask instead that
Palestinians recognise Israel (proper) as a civil, democratic, and
pluralistic state whose official religion is Judaism, and whose majority
is Jewish. Many states (including Israel's neighbours Jordan and Egypt,
and countries such as Greece) have their official religion as
Christianity or Islam (but grant equal civil rights to all citizens) and
there is no reason why Israeli Jews should not want the religion of
their state to be officially Jewish. This is a reasonable demand, and it
may allay the fears of Jewish Israelis about becoming a minority in
Israel, and at the same time not arouse fears among Palestinians and
Arabs about being ethnically cleansed in Palestine. Demanding the
recognition of Israel's official religion as Judaism, rather than the
recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", would also mean Israel
continuing to be a democracy.
Sari Nusseibeh is a professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Comments
Post a Comment