Academics debate Jewish nation-state bill

Yoram Hazony and Mira Sucharov

About 300 listeners tuned in Dec. 10 to hear academics Yoram Hazony and Mira Sucharov square off in an impassioned debate about Israel’s proposed Jewish nation-state law.

The webinar was hosted by Jewish Federations of Canada-United Israel Appeal (JFC-UIA) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and moderated by CIJA’s deputy director of communications and advocacy training, Jordan Kerbel. 

The purpose of the debate was, Kerbel explained, to “strengthen understanding” of the controversial bill and promote “healthy debate… in order to have a vibrant, open-minded and inclusive Jewish community.”

Hazony, an Israeli philosopher, writer, political theorist and president of the Jerusalem-based research and training centre the Herzl Institute, argued in favour of the Jewish nation-state, while Sucharov, an associate professor of political science at Carleton University, a blogger for Ha’aretz and the Forward and a regular columnist in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin and Vancouver’s Jewish Independent, argued against it.

Hazony began by claiming that the nation-state law would enshrine certain legislative protections for Jews that were considered essential at the time of Israel’s founding, such as a military that “protects Jews all over the world whenever they are threatened or in danger,” a law that gives Jews automatic citizenship, and an educational system that serves Jewish interests.

In the Diaspora, particularly in North America, he said, “You have to be quite wealthy to afford a Jewish education. The State of Israel was created in order to be able to educate a Jewish child for free.”

Hazony said it’s “painful” to hear critics of the nation-state bill express concern that it’s racist, arguing that when Israel was first founded, “the idea of self-determination for nations – especially for persecuted nations – was considered a liberal, progressive cause.”

He compared Israel to countries in Europe. “We see a continent filled with independent nations, each of whom expresses themselves according to their own independence and national character… Israel, as the only democratic nation in the Middle East, is just like the democracies in Europe and around the world.”

Sucharov framed her argument by outlining aspects of the Israeli political and social arena that she maintains are “broken” and focused on how the nation-state bill would further erode them.

She raised the issues of Arab-Jewish relations, asylum-seekers to Israel, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the occupation of the West Bank, secular-religious tensions among Jews, Israel’s “troubled standing” internationally, and bills in the Knesset that “verge on non-liberal expression” such as “attempts to criminalize anti-settlement boycotts.”

“For all of these issues, this bill will hurt and not help Israel,” Sucharov said.

She added that the bill would “symbolically underscore Arab Israelis’ sense of second-class citizenry and further inflame morale” and argued it would cause them to vote in fewer numbers. Their sense of disenfranchisement could, she maintained, lead to “extra-governmental ways of expressing themselves.”

The bill could also serve as “a measure of bad faith” in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

After 47 years of occupation, ongoing settlement building, confiscation of Palestinian land and “collective punishment [of Palestinians],” Sucharov argued, passage of the bill could lead to “a type of national xenophobia that would increase the polarization between Israel’s national desires and its view of whether the Palestinians deserve their own state.”

To end the debate, Hazony and Sucharov sparred over whether the nation-state bill would diminish Israel’s democratic character: Hazony argued that, for a democracy to exist, equality must be balanced with security, liberty and a country’s “control of its population.”

“Jewish values are such that the overwhelming majority of Jews want to have a society where all people are free to worship and have a good life.” He added: “We need to do certain things to protect our country. This won’t lead to a fascistic or theocratic country.”

Sucharov countered, “There’s no such thing as a little bit equal. Either [minorities in Israel] will be granted full rights or not. Israel can claim its lack of equality is for security, but this is a slippery slope when it comes to the democratic state.”