Saving Israel by Gordis Daniel

Author:Gordis, Daniel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

What Gavison has in mind for Israel, therefore, is not a pure liberal democracy; instead, her vision approximates “ethnic democracy,” a democratic system described by Professor Sammy Smooha that “combines the extension of civil and political rights to permanent residents who wish to be citizens with the bestowal of a favored status on the majority group.” Because ethnic democracy is a system in which “the state belongs to the majority and serves it more than the minority,” some legal philosophers consider it a “diminished” form of democracy, and for that reason, many Israelis and supporters of Israel are distinctly uncomfortable endorsing it. Yet even Smooha, a critic of ethnic democracy and a (Jewish) passionate defender of the rights of Israel’s Arabs, admits that “the democratic framework is real, not a facade.”

The democratic framework may be real, but there is no question that for those not part of the majority ethnicity, it is diminished. The feeling that Israeli Arabs have that they are not fully “mainstreamed” in Israeli society is real and undeniable. The pain that this causes them is also real. Even Jews who may insist that there is no alternative if the Jewish state is to remain Jewish must admit the sense of relative deprivation that Israeli Arabs feel. The fact that Israeli Arabs may have significantly more civil rights than they would have in Palestine is only partially relevant; relative to their Jewish fellow citizens, they are deprived. And no serious discussion of this issue can proceed without acknowledging that.

The problem for Israel’s Jews, however, is that the Arab citizens of the Jewish state insist that, as a consequence of that relative deprivation, the Jewish state must abandon its primary commitment to Jews and the Jewish people. One Israeli Arab spokesman, for example, has insisted that when Israelis discuss the creation of a constitution, Israeli Arabs “increasingly find themselves being used as fig leaves to provide cover for the effort to consolidate a Jewish consensus around the project of constituting Israel as ‘Jewish and democratic.’” The objection here is not simply to a diminished place for Israeli Arabs; we can understand why any Israeli Arab would find that troubling. The problem, for Israeli Jews and for those who care about the Jewish state, is that the fundamental objection is to the notion that Israel can be, or should be, a Jewish and democratic state.

But current trends in Israel notwithstanding, understanding and even sympathizing with Israeli Arabs and their frustrations about Israel’s being a Jewish state does not require Israeli Jews to capitulate to it. The critical question for Israel’s future is not what form of democracy in Israel might arouse the least objection. Instead, the question that matters most is what form of governmental system could both guarantee civil liberties to all of Israel’s citizens and at the same time preserve Israel as the sort of state that can contribute to the survival, and the flourishing, of the Jewish people. That, after all, is precisely what a homeland is for.

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