The Israeli demand to be recognised as a
"Jewish state" by the Palestinians is an inherently problematic concept
The Israeli government's current mantra is that the
Palestinians must recognise a "Jewish State". Of course, the
Palestinians have clearly and repeatedly recognised the State of Israel as such
in the 1993 Oslo Accords (which were based on an Israeli promise to establish a
Palestinian state within five years - a promise now shattered) and many times
since. Recently, however, Israeli leaders have dramatically and unilaterally
moved the goal-posts and are now clamouring that Palestinians must recognise Israel as a
"Jewish State".
In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry concluded
that the demand for a "Jewish State" was not part of the obligations
of the Balfour Declaration or the British Mandate. Even in the First Zionist
Congress in Basel
in 1897, when Zionists sought to "establish a home for the Jewish
people", there was no reference of a "Jewish State". The Zionist
Organisation preferred at first to use the description "Jewish
homeland" or "Jewish Commonwealth". Many pioneering Zionist
leaders, such as Judah
Magnes and Martin Buber also avoided the clear and explicit term "Jewish
State" for their project of a homeland for Jews, and preferred instead the
concept of a democratic bi-national state.
Today, however, demands for a "Jewish State" from
Israeli politicians are growing without giving thought to what this might mean,
and its supporters claim that it would be as natural as calling France a French
State. However, if we consider the subject dispassionately, the idea of a
"Jewish State" is logically and morally problematic because of its
legal, religious, historical and social implications. The implications of this
term therefore need to be spelled out, and we are sure that once they are, most
people - and most Israeli citizens, we trust - will not accept these
implications.
Many implications
First, let us say that confusion immediately arises here
because the term "Jewish" can be applied both to the ancient race of
Israelites and their descendants, as well as to those who believe in and
practice the religion of Judaism. These generally overlap, but not always. For
example, some ethnic Jews are atheists and there are converts to Judaism
(leaving aside the question of whether these are accepted as such by
Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who are not ethnic Jews.
Second, let us suggest also that having a modern
nation-state being defined by one ethnicity or one religion is problematic in
itself - if not inherently self-contradictory - because the modern nation-state
as such is a temporal and civic institution, and because no state in the world
is - or can be in practice - ethnically or religiously homogenous.
Third, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state"
implies that Israel is, or should be, either a theocracy (if we take the word
"Jewish" to apply to the religion of Judaism) or an apartheid state
(if we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the ethnicity of Jews), or
both, and in all of these cases, Israel is then no longer a democracy -
something which has rightly been the pride of most Israelis since the country's
founding in 1948.
Fourth, at least one in five Israelis - 20 per cent of the
population, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics - is
ethnically Arab (and are mostly either Muslim, Christian, Druze or Bahai), and
recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" as such makes one-fifth of the
population of Israel automatically strangers in their own native land and opens
the door to legally reducing them, most undemocratically, to second-class
citizens (or perhaps even stripping them of their citizenship and other rights)
- something that no-one, much less a Palestinian leader, has a right to do.
Fifth, recognising a "Jewish State" as such in Israel would mean legally that while
Palestinians no longer have citizens' rights there, any member of world Jewry
outside of Israel
(up to 10 million people perhaps), should be entitled to full citizens' rights
there, no matter wherever they may be in the world today and regardless of
their current nationality. Indeed, Israel publicly admits that it does
not hold the land for the benefit of its citizens but holds it, in trust, on
behalf of the Jews of the world for all time. This is something that happens in
practice, but that obviously Palestinians in the occupied territories -
including Jerusalem - do not see as fair, especially as they are constantly
forcibly evicted off their ancestral homeland by Israel to make way for foreign
Jewish settlers, and because Palestinians in their diaspora are denied the same
right to come and live.
Sixth, it means, before final status negotiations have even
started, that Palestinians would have then given up the rights of about 7
million Palestinians in the diaspora to repatriation or compensation; 7 million
Palestinians descended from the Palestinians who in 1900 lived in historical Palestine
(ie what is now Israel, the West Bank including Jerusalem, and Gaza) and at
that time made up 800,000 of its 840,000 inhabitants; and who were driven off
their land through war, violent eviction or fear.
Seventh, recognising a "Jewish state" in Israel -
a state which purports to annex the whole of Jerusalem, East and West, and
calls Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided capital" (as if the city, or
even the world itself, were eternal; as if it were really undivided, and as if
it actually were legally recognised by the international community as Israel's
capital) - means completely ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is as holy to 2.2
billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims, as it is to 15-20 million Jews
worldwide.
In other words, this would be to privilege Judaism above the
religions of Christianity and Islam, whose adherents together comprise 55 per
cent of the world's population. Regrettably this is a narrative propagated even
by renowned Jewish author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who, on April 15, 2010,
took out full page ads in The New York Times and The Washington
Post and claimed that Jerusalem
"is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture - and not a single
time in the Qur'an". Now we do not propose to speak for native Palestinian
Arab Christians - except to say the that Jerusalem is quite obviously the city
of Jesus Christ the Messiah - but as Muslims, we believe that Jerusalem is not
the "third holiest city of Islam" as is sometimes claimed, but simply
one of Islam's three holy cities. And, of course, despite what Mr Wiesel seems
to believe, Jerusalem is indeed clearly referred to in the Holy Qur'an in Surat
al-Isra' (17:1): "Glorified be He Who transported His servant by night
from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Aqsa Place of Worship whose
precincts We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo! He, only
He, is the Hearer, the Seer."
Moreover, Muslims wanting to take a similar, religiously
exclusive narrative, could point out that while Jerusalem is mentioned 600 times
in the Bible, it is not mentioned once in the Torah as such - a fact that any
Biblical Concordance will easily confirm. Of course we do, however, recognise
the importance of the land of Israel in the religion of Judaism - this is even
mentioned in the Qur'an, 5:21 - we only ask that the Israeli government
reciprocate this courtesy and allow Muslims to speak for themselves in
expressing what they consider, and have always considered, as holy to them.
There is another reason, more serious than all of the seven
mentioned above, why Palestinian leaders - and indeed no responsible person -
can morally recognise Israel
as a "Jewish State" as such. It has to do with the very Covenant of
God in the Bible with Ancient Israelites of the promise of a homeland for Jews.
God says to Abraham in the Bible: On the same day the LORD made a covenant with
Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river
of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates - the Kenites, the
Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the
Jebusites." (Genesis, 15:18-21; NKJ)
The ancient Israelites then go on to possess this land in
the time of Moses, upon God's command, as follows: "When the LORD your God
brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations
before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the
Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations
greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them
over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no
covenant with them nor show mercy to them. (Deuteronomy, 7:1-2; NKJ)
"Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today,
and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities
great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants
of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said: 'Who can stand
before the descendants of Anak?' Therefore understand today that the LORD your
God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them
and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them
quickly, as the LORD has said to you." (Deuteronomy, 9:1-4; NKJ)
The fate of many of the original inhabitants is then as
follows: And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and
woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.
(Joshua, 6:21; NKJ)
And this continues even later on in time, as follows: Samuel
also said to Saul: "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people,
over Israel.
Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD
of hosts: 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel,
how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill
both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and
donkey.'" (1 Samuel, 15:1-3; NKJ)
Now it is very easy to cherry-pick quotes from scripture
permitting or enjoining violence. One could cite, out of context, verses such
as the "sword verse" in the Holy Qur'an: Then, when the sacred months
have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and
confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they
repent, and establish prayer and pay the alms, then leave their way free. God
is Forgiving, Merciful. (Al-Tawbah, 9:5)
One could even cite verses - again out of context - from
Jesus Christ's own words in the Gospel, as follows: "But bring here those
enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before
me.'" (Luke, 19:27; NKJ)
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew, 10:34; NKJ)
Democracy or a Jewish State?
Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament,
God commands the Jewish state in the land
of Israel to come into
being through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants.
Moreover, this command has its roots in the very Covenant of God with Abraham
(or rather "Abram" at that time) in the Bible and it thus forms one
of the core tenets of Judaism as such, at least as we understand it. No one
then can blame Palestinians and descendents of the ancient Canaanites,
Jebusites and others who inhabited the land before the Ancient Israelites (as
seen in the Bible itself) for a little trepidation as regards what recognising
Israel as a "Jewish State" means for them, particularly to certain
Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews. No one then can blame Palestinians for asking
if recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means recognising the
legitimacy of offensive warfare or violence against them by Israel to take what
remains of Palestine from them.
We need hardly say that this comes against a background
where every day the Israeli settler movement is grabbing more land in the West
Bank and Jerusalem (there are now 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank
alone) - aided, abetted, funded and empowered by the current Israeli government
- and throwing or forcing more and more Palestinians out, in so many different
ways that it would take volumes to describe. Moreover, there are credible
reports that despite the almost universal agreement in Rabbinical texts
throughout the ages that the divine command to kill the Amalekites was a unique
and isolated historical incident that applied only to the race of the Ancient
Amalekites, there are now, in certain religious schools in Israel, people who
draw parallels between the Palestinians of today and the ancient Amalekites and
their like (this was apparently the opinion of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief Rabbi of
Israel; see also, for example: Shulamit Aloni's article 'Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness', CounterPunch,
March, 8-9, 2003).
In short, recognition of Israel
as a "Jewish State" in Israel
is not the same as, say, recognition of Greece
today as a "Christian
State". It entails,
in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant between God and a Chosen
People regarding a Promised Land that should be taken by force at the expense
of the other inhabitants of the land and of non-Jews. This idea is not present
as such in other religions that we know of. Moreover, even secular and
progressive voices in Israel, such as former president of the Supreme Court of
Israel, Aharon Barak, understand the concept of a "Jewish State" as
follows: "[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people … it is a
state in which every Jew has the right to return … a Jewish state derives its
values from its religious heritage, the Bible is the basic of its books and
Israel's prophets are the basis of its morality … a Jewish state is a state in
which the values of Israel, Torah, Jewish heritage and the values of the Jewish
halacha [religious law] are the bases of its values." ('A State in
Emergency', Ha'aretz, 19 June, 2005.)
So, rather than demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as
a "Jewish State" as such - adding "beyond chutzpah" to
insult and injury - we offer the suggestion that Israeli leaders ask instead
that Palestinians recognise Israel (proper) as a civil, democratic, and
pluralistic state whose official religion is Judaism, and whose majority is
Jewish. Many states (including Israel's
neighbours Jordan and Egypt,
and countries such as Greece)
have their official religion as Christianity or Islam (but grant equal civil
rights to all citizens) and there is no reason why Israeli Jews should not want
the religion of their state to be officially Jewish. This is a reasonable
demand, and it may allay the fears of Jewish Israelis about becoming a minority
in Israel, and at the same
time not arouse fears among Palestinians and Arabs about being ethnically
cleansed in Palestine.
Demanding the recognition of Israel's
official religion as Judaism, rather than the recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", would also
mean Israel
continuing to be a democracy.
________________________________________________
Sari Nusseibeh is a professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University
in Jerusalem.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source: Al Jazeera
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