The State of all its (Non-Zionist) Citizens

by Moshe Feiglin

The debate over the right to separate settlement in the Jewish State Bill is actually a debate over what we are first – a Jewish state or a democratic state.

Israel was established so that the Jewish Nation would have a state. As such, Israel is a Jewish state. It adopted democracy as its form of government, and it is good that it did so.

Israel was not established so that there would be another democracy in the world. That is not what we dreamed of for 2000 years. That is not what we were slaughtered for and fought for, that is not why they are fighting against us today. It is not for democracy that we send our sons to fight on our borders.

We do all this so that there will be a Jewish state in the world. Period.

In the days of the Rabin government, however, the radical Left, led by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, successfully swept the state and the myopic Right into a revolution that turned everything around. They added the word ‘democratic’ to the definition of the state, with the stated intention of turning Israel into a state of all its citizens.

The Jewish right to establish a Jewish village in their Land stems from the fact that Israel is a Jewish state. As a result of the revolution (the coup, for all practical purposes), expressions like “the Juda-ization of the Gallil and Negev”, which were once positive Zionist expressions, are now considered racist. In the first years of the State, it was clear that democracy was the “lid” of the Jewish State “pot” – but not the “pot”, itself. Today, the President of the State of the Jews (as always, a rightist) has adopted the ‘Jewish and democratic’ mantra. By doing so, he is effectively undermining the foundations of the Jewish State and its very reason and right to exist.

There is also a lot of hypocrisy in the opposition to the Jewish State Bill. It is true that when a village is built for the ultra-Orthodox, it is permissible for any non-observant Jew to also buy a home there and when a village is built for Arabs, it is permissible for any Jew to live there. But that claim rests on the fact that the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs see no value in the Jewish State. The ultra-Orthodox themselves will show a woman who is not modestly dressed the way out of their village. And a Jew who will wave the Israeli flag on Independence Day in the Arab village of Um El Fahm will also be shown the exit.

In other words, President Rivlin and all the proponents of a state of all its citizen actually support a state of all its non-Zionist citizens.

The Jewish State Bill is a good bill.

But the Left need not fear. In its present form it will not pass and the High Court will continue to block any possibility of establishing a Jewish village in the Jewish state.

It’s sure a good thing that the Right is in power…