Can Israel be Jewish and democratic?

On Nov. 23, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet passed three versions of the controversial Jewish nation-state bill. The bill, which has seen several iterations in the last little while, seeks to press the Jewish character of Israel with the stamp of eternity. After the cabinet passed it, the bill’s three different versions went to a parliamentary committee tasked with combining them in accord with a draft submitted by the prime minister. 

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid have attempted to block the bill’s passage to committee, mostly because the draft does not explicitly define Israel as a democratic state, but rather as a Jewish state with a democratic form of government. 

The difference between the version that was passed by the cabinet and another, hypothetical version that Livni and Lapid could support seems trivial but is, in fact, important. Netanyahu’s draft leaves open the possibility of a future bill that could change the form of government in Israel. Livni and Lapid believe many – perhaps too many – members of the Knesset would be glad to replace democracy with one or another form of monarchy. They want that provision out.

Meanwhile, the prime minister hopes his compromise draft of the nation-state bill will not dissolve his fragile coalition. If his gambit fails, anything could happen.

Another view: For most Jews, democratic values are Jewish values

Not since the disengagement from Gaza of 2006 has the Israeli public been so engaged in an issue. Advocates and critics are at each other’s throats – in the media, in the cafés, at the dinner tables and, in at least one instance of which I have been apprised, in the nation’s bedrooms. 

Critics are arguing that the bill – in any form – will provoke the Arab sectors and may escalate the violence already on display to intifadah proportions. But several rank officers have taken such critics to task, claiming the Palestinians are not prepared to launch into full-scale violence of the sort Israel has experienced twice before. Last week, Shin Bet security chief Yoram Cohen declared that the many abominable instances of terror in the past weeks are to be considered isolated crimes, neither encouraged nor organized by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Contrary to official statements, it appears there is no brewing intifadah, because there is no central leadership.

Critics of the bill also say it undermines the peace process in general, and would kill the two-state solution for all time. Advocates of the bill raise their eyebrows in mock wonder: “Why should a Palestinian leader not welcome a bill that goes a long distance toward creating two discrete peoples populating the two states?” Either way, it is a pretty well acknowledged fact that no Palestinian leader could or would allow himself to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Some critics claim the bill will add fuel to the fires of those who seek to construct the Third Temple on the site currently occupied by the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Shrine of the Golden Dome. Government officials and some religious leaders have responded, mostly convincingly, by affirming the law that forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount. 

And yet, a number of secular-Zionists I’ve spoken to during my month-long visit to Israel confessed to experiencing a sinking feeling these days. “I feel very much the way I did in the months and days preceding Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination,” a woman in her late-60s told me. Her husband, who served as deputy chief of the Mossad, said that, in his view, “the excesses and the corruption have reached unbearable levels. Operation Protective Edge accomplished none of its expressed goals. The nation-state bill is all bells and whistles… not worthy of a second look.” 

I don’t agree. I think it’s worthy of a second, a third and a fourth look, because the real significance of this bill is its undeclared target: Israel’s founding secular-Zionist movement. Israel’s original vision was purposefully given no definition so that future generations could engage with it creatively to form identities in accord with the image they saw in their own mirror. This bill will change that forever. 

The nation-state bill risks the very wellsprings upon which the State of Israel was built. It represents, in its hubris, a triumph for those who seek to brand the present with the stamp of eternity. It inscribes the death of one vision for Israel, and the birth of a new one. n

David Berlin is the founding editor of The Walrus magazine.