Israel wants to be ‘darkness unto the nations’ — to remove the mask so as to reveal the ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance
By Mordechai Kremnitzer
The Knesset debate over the proposed Basic Law on Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People is of momentous importance, second only to the declaration of national independence. If passed, the law will foment a revolution, no less. It will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that is bound to the principles of the Declaration of Independence (a commitment that was in an earlier version of the bill and was removed); a state bound to universal and liberal values (whose sources can be found in Jewish and other cultures), even if they are not realized perfectly in practice. This state will be replaced by a Jewish state, religious and ultranationalist, anti-humanist and anti-liberal.
This will be the case not only because of the constitutional, racist authority to establish “pure” communities on the basis of religion or ethnicity — in practice, Jewish communities from which Arabs are excluded. Rather, it is mainly because, despite the bill’s name and content, Israel is not only the nation-state of the Jewish people. It is also the state of all its citizens, including its Arab citizens. If that were not so, it would not be a democracy.
