Politics

إسرائيل تختار الهوية وتنبذ الديمقراطية

Sep 21, 2018 Shlomo Ben-Ami

تل أبيب ــ يؤكد "قانون الدولة القومية" الجديد في إسرائيل على أن "حق ممارسة تقرير المصير الوطني" في البلاد "يقتصر على الشعب اليهودي"، ويعتبر اللغة العبرية اللغة الرسمية للبلاد، ويؤسس "الاستيطان اليهودي كقيمة وطنية" تعمل الدولة على تعزيزها. ويستنكر الليبراليون القانون لتعديه على حقوق الأقلية العربية المدنية. لكن هذا القانون قد يُضعِف الديمقراطية الإسرائيلية على نحو أكثر غدرا.

الواقع أن القانون الجديد ــ وهو أحدث خطوة في الحملة المتهورة التي يقودها تحالف رئيس الوزراء بنيامين نتنياهو اليميني المتطرف لتحويل إسرائيل إلى ديمقراطية غير ليبرالية ــ يتناقض مع إعلان الاستقلال في عام 1948 والقانون الأساسي: الكرامة الإنسانية والحرية لعام 1992. وكل منهما يضمن الحقوق الفردية للجميع، اليهود والعرب.

ومع ذلك، تحدت الحكومة الإسرائيلية هذه المعايير في الممارسة العملية لفترة طويلة. فرغم أن الإسرائيليين العرب ربما يتساوون دستوريا من الناحية الفنية مع الإسرائيليين اليهود، فإن هذا لم يمنع الحكومة من التمييز ضدهم. على سبيل المثال، يُحتَفَظ بأغلب أراضي البلاد كوديعة للشعب اليهودي.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 5 Comments on this article

Jaap Bosma Sep 26, 2018

Once again, the nation state law makes clear that Israel is a racist endeavor and its 'democracy' is a racist democracy. It structurally discriminates against Palestinians in so many ways. Horrible!
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M M Sep 24, 2018

BiBi does not look very happy in the photo above! One wonders why?
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Petey Bee Sep 24, 2018

This all was known long ago. You can't have an Israeli state that's all 3 of the following: democratic/consistent with basic human dignity, Jewish, and contains a lot of Palestinian land. You get to pick two of those at most, and if the process is done badly maybe only one.

That was the whole point of the 2-state solution. The presumption was that the most valuable two attributes of the Israeli state were to be Jewish and Democratic/respectable.

However, the right-wingers, most firmly entrenched at the top of Israeli politics, appear to value the extra land more highly. Or maybe it is imagined that all three (Democratic/respectable, Jewish, more land) are possible.

That would presume that the Palestinians would all just voluntarily leave.

Apart from theoretical considerations relating to the "voluntarily" part, this might even be possible -- if there was some great place for Palestinians to go. Unfortunately, successful Israeli foreign relations requires all the neighboring countries to have governments that are themselves not very democratic, lest they elect either Arab-Nationalist or Islamic governments.

The result is the mother of all catch-22's.

The US is actively enabling this process - for reasons that might have made sense (in a Henry Kissinger kind of way) during the cold war against the USSR, but that ended nearly 30 years ago.

The current rationale for enabling this self-destructive process, the substitute-cold-war, egged on by regional powers might happen to benefit, is a foolish crusade against Iran, ISIS, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, anyone who can be plausibly vilified. This has done nothing but create trouble.
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j. von Hettlingen Sep 22, 2018

Shlomo Ben-Ami says Israel’s controversial naton-state law passed in July declaring that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it” amounts to apartheid. It aims to ensure that Jewish Israelis “remain in control, even if they become the minority.” The legislation will complicate a two-state solution, “laying the groundwork to suppress the Arab majority “ in the face of an Israeli annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.
The breakdown of the peace talks and the right-wing government’s single-minded pursuit of its “Jewish identity” to the detriment of its democracy “will be bad not just for its Arab citizens, but ultimately for Jewish Israelis as well.” For years many Israelis watch with apprehension how a religious extremism similar to hard-line ideologies prevalent in neighbouring Muslim states dominates their country. Violent far-right settlers backed by extremist rabbis are pushing their government to step up its expansionist policies.
The author is right about Netanyahu’s ultra-right cabinet posing a threat to Israel’s much-touted liberal values and its underpinnings of individual rights and equality. While defending the social fabric of the Jewish society, their national security and identity, ultra-right settlers and Orthodox Jews put their rights before democracy, bending over backwards to insist Hebrew be the country’s official language, and defend “Jewish settlement as a national value.”
A “majority“ of Israelis have come to believe that their country “cannot be both Jewish and fully democratic.” This allows them to tolerate “the erosion of democratic values that Netanyahu has overseen, determining that they must put identity first.” Arab Israelis are being treated as third-class citizens, with Arabic being stripped of its designation as an official language alongside Hebrew. The nation-state law serves to restrict their recourse to legal course of actions, especially when they are thriving economically and demographically.
According to the author, “most state land.... is held in trust for the Jewish people.” While Israeli authorities allow settlers to build on grabbed land, they deny Palestinans permits to build on their own territories. Using the pretext of tackling illegal construction, they demolish houses to restrict Palestinian expansion. Tragedies unfold when Palestinian families watch how blood and sweat invested in building their homes are being torn down.
The nefarious game Netanyahu knows so well is to instil fear and to appeal to the people’s “base tribal instincts.” The author accuses him of resorting to “ultra-nationalist and anti-Arab rhetoric,” duping Israelis into “believing that they are under threat, physically, demographically, and even existentially, thereby pitting them against their Arab compatriots.” He won the 2015 election by warning that the Arabs were heading to the polling stations “in droves.” This mobilised his base to cast their votes.
Netanyahu is merely an opportunist who loves the trappings of power. Greed has proved his undoing and history will not be kind to him. When the day comes that Israelis realise that the two-state solution is the only path to peace, it might be too late. The case for a single, bi-national state will entail the end of Israel, and of Zionism. Israel's illegal settlements are so entrenched that uprooting them to make way for a viable Palestinian state has become impossible. A single, state in the whole of the former British Mandate for Palestine is Netanyahu’s goal, but it will not be democratic.
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Jonathan Engel Sep 21, 2018

As Mr Erdogan was quoted in the Economist as saying "Democracy is like a train; you get off once you have reached your destination." Oh dear... Not Israel.... Did any Israeli say something like that ?
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إسرائيل تختار الهوية وتنبذ الديمقراطية

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