A Jewish and Democratic State … And It’s Not New York

In what’s thought to be a move to appease the right wing of his government, Netanyahu has successfully advanced through Knesset a bill that requires new citizens to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Could they have thought of better timing?
In the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident and the settlement freeze expiration, 2010 has been an abysmal publicity year for Israel. It’s gotten to the point where the government had so little face to lose that it recently attempted to raise the issue again as a bargaining chip, by offering Palestinian leadership a renewal of the freeze in exchange for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Despite stereotypes and perennial lessons, few international observers seem to actually grasp that Israel does politics bluntly and without nuance. It’s largely a symptom of the military personalities who preside over a culture where pushiness is prized as a survival asset.
Other countries often do smoothly what Israel does controversially, and I’d argue that Israel’s new citizenship laws find direct parallel in the European programs to acculturate immigrants into recognizing their new homes’ languages, cultures, and ethnic majorities.
Besides presentation, there’s little practically different about France as a French state and Israel as a Jewish state. The dissonance is really an accident in historical naming: Israel and Judah were two related states in the Ancient Near East, their identities coalesced into one, the resulting people called themselves ‘Jews’, and their descendants opted to christen the Zionist project ‘Israel’. It’s as if France were still called France, but its people were called Gauls. Would there be any controversy over the proclamation of a Gaulish state? The Jewish and democratic model, however uncomfortable it feels for some, is simply the way things have to be. Nix the Jewish, and Israel loses its raison d’être; nix the democratic, and Israel risks slouching toward Jewish theocracy.
There are undeniable problems with the configuration: Jewish gets interpreted ethnoreligiously, getting in the way of a healthy separation of church and state. And an official emphasis on Jewish national affairs has left Israeli Arabs underfunded and excluded.
Fundamentally, though, the policy of trying to maintain a national identity is fairly sound. Israel’s government just happens to go about it indiscreetly, and with terrible timing. More than any other country, Israel needs to take practical and symbolic measures to secure its existence – an area where it can’t afford to be criticized. So for just this one issue, couldn’t Israel’s leaders spare a bit more subtlety?