To hide Israel's discrimination or declare it?
Nablus: a demonstration on Land Day, which commemorates the killing of six Palestinian citizens of Israel in 1976 by Israeli forces during Palestinian protests over state theft of their land. Photo by Rami Swidan/MaanImages
Jerry Haber, Facebook
December 31, 2014
On the whole, I would rather be playing the banjo, but:
To the Editors of the NYTimes
RE: Israel a Jewish Republic
Kai Bird writes that in the coming elections Israelis will decide whether Israel will remain a Jewish state in the sense that America is a ‘Christian state’, a state rooted in a certain religious and cultural heritage, or whether it will become a Jewish state that “provides legal and material preferences for citizens of Jewish ancestry.” However, that decision was made already in the early years of Israel, when citizenship (Israeli) was sharply distinguished from nationality (Jewish). Attempts to recognize an Israeli nationality have been repeatedly ruled invalid by the Israeli Supreme Court . The choice facing Israeli voters is whether Israel should declare openly its de facto and de jure ethnic discrimination in a nationality law whether or to continue its amimut (‘non-transparency’) on this issue. Either way, it will remain a state of the Jewish people and not a state of all its citizens.
Graffiti in Hebron, ssrayed by settlers. The Basic Law represents such views, in politer words
No Israeli constitution
The above Facebook entry by Jerry Haber engendered a debate, initiated by Adam Greene who thought there was a de facto Israeli constitution, leading to these responses from Jerry Haber and Richard Silverstein:
Jerry Haber The last attempt to write a constitution was a few years ago during the Olmert prime ministership. I know this because my colleague, Menachem Ben Sasson, currently President of Hebrew University, was the chair of the constitution committee. There is no constitution, nor will there be in the foreseeable future, but there are Basic Laws that are constitutional in nature. The new Jewish nation law would be a Basic Law.
Richard Silverstein Adam: Please don’t believe anything you read in the JCPA site. It’s right wing Likudist hasbara. There IS NO ISRAELI CONSITUTION, period. There are Basic Laws which some try to pretend are the same as a constitution. But they’re not. Many of the Basic Laws are aspirational and sound good on paper. But they are not prescriptive & as such relatively useless in terms of dictating or prescribing behavior or misbehavior.