WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: What ought to concern us is not that Israel’s Knesset passed a “controversial” Jewish Nation-State bill this week, similar to European and other states’ constitutions, but that the world singularly denies the Jewish state this basic right. We have to ask ourselves whether we’ve adequately made “the land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people” case to the world.
This Week: Reaction to Jewish State Bill Is What Ought To Concern Us
Jews who believe that the Jewish state has long been hypocritically subjected to a double-standard, which ought to be all of us, got another big dose of validation this week in world, including some Jewish, reaction to the Knesset’s adoption of the “Jewish State” bill.
This new Basic Law, which declares “The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established,” and defines the Star of David flag, the seven-branched menorah, and Hatikvah as the State’s flag, emblem and anthem, and its language as Hebrew, with Arabic having a “special status” [Hebrew, English and Arabic had been “official” under the holdover British Mandate laws], has garnered singular instant criticism from all those, including leaders of some American Jewish organizations, arrogating to themselves the right to dictate to the world’s only Jewish state what is proper and improper for it to do.
Eugene Kontorovich wrote a stinging response to those hypocritical critics of Israel in a Wall Street Journal article Thursday, “Get Over It – Israel Is The Jewish State,” pointing out that “Israel’s Basic Law would not be out of place among the liberal democratic constitutions of Europe – which contain similar provisions that have not aroused controversy.” Hitting the nail on the head, he continued: “The illiberalism here lies with the law’s critics, who would deny the Jewish state the freedom to legislate like a normal country.”
We need to focus on the world not treating Israel as a normal country, exemplified by the criticisms of Israel’s “The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people” Basic Law:
*** Egypt: A Reuters article carried by Haaretz (7/21/18) quoted Egypt as saying:
“The Arab Republic [emphasis added] of Egypt announces … its rejection of the law passed by the Israeli Knesset on the ‘national state for the Jewish people’ law … for its ramifications that consecrate the concept of occupation and racial segregation.”
(Meanwhile, Pajamas Media this week carried Middle East Forum’s Raymond Ibrahim’s article that Egypt requires its Christian, as well as Muslim, doctors to recite daily an Allah and Muhammad-mentioning oath, “so that all hospitalized Egyptians hear it,” that critics say contains language leading to their becoming “de facto Muslims.”)
*** Turkey: The Turks reject “this racist move that amounts to erasing the Palestinian people from their homeland physically and legally.” (Reuters, 7/19/18).
*** EU: Reuters: “The European Union on Thursday said it was concerned about a new Israeli law which declares that only Jews have the right of self-determination, and said it would complicate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” (Ibid.)
*** Some Leaders of American Jews: The Times of Israel ran an article this morning headlined: “Reform and AJC Leaders Bitterly Criticize Israel’s Nation-State Bill.” World Israel News Thursday headlined “Reform Judaism Head Slams Law Enshrining Israel’s Jewish Character.” It quoted the American Reform movement’s leader, Rabbi Jacobs, that it “passionately opposes this new law because of the harmful effect on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, as well as its negative impact on the balance between the various core founding values of the State of Israel.”
If we want Israel to be treated as a normal country, we have to make the case that it is a normal country, which even liberals including Dr. Weitzmann, who told the British, not that he wanted a Jewish state to be created and founded, but that “Jews were living in Jerusalem when London was a swamp,” and Abba Eban, who told the U.N. that nobody was doing Israel a favor by acknowledging its “right to exist,” which every nation possessed, understood.
We have to state unequivocally and unapologetically precisely what the parliament of Israel stated this week: “The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.”
The heirs of the Ottoman Empire to the contrary notwithstanding, Jews asserting our right to our land of Israel homeland, physically and legally, does not “erase,” physically or legally, Palestinian Arabs from Palestine. They are the majority population of 78% of the Palestine Mandate that has a zero population of Jews. Plus Gaza, with its zero population of Jews.
In recognizing that the EU and most of the rest of the world support a “two-state solution” including a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan, we have to make clear that such boundaries for the State of Israel are not the boundaries of the historic Land of Israel, embracing the entirety of western Palestine, including Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem. We diaspora Jews have to recognize that decisions regarding its relations with Arabs and the State of Israel’s borders are the State of Israel’s to make, and that the only power it does not have over Judea-Samaria is to call it “West Bank.”
But all of us have to recognize, and undo to the extent which we still can, the great damage to the world’s treatment of the State of Israel as a normal state which we have allowed to occur in our lifetime. E.g.:
*** During the Mandate, Jews, Christians and Muslims living in Palestine were all called “Palestinians.” Today, even we call Palestinian Arabs “the Palestinians,” a significant concession when the place over which we’re in conflict is “Palestine.”
*** In 1947, the U.N. itself called Samaria and Judea by its Jewish-origin name “Samaria and Judea,” in use for millennia. Today, even we call it “West Bank.”
*** We acquiesce in the media labeling Israel “created and founded” in 1948, and calling historic Jerusalem “captured by Israel in 1967.” It was captured by Israel c. 1004 BCE.
Etc., etc.
If we want the world to accept that “the land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established,” we have to, first, stop using terminology belittling that historical homeland connection ourselves.