Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights by Alexander Yakobson & Amnon Rubinstein

Author:Alexander Yakobson & Amnon Rubinstein [Yakobson, Alexander & Rubinstein, Amnon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Social Science, General
ISBN: 9780415464413
Google: tFxW-7skk3UC
Goodreads: 5271246
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

5 ‘Either Jewish or democratic’?

‘Jewish and democratic state’: oxymoron?

A Jewish and democratic [state] – there can be no such thing. Either it is ‘Jewish’ or it is democratic. Otherwise this is just an attempt to evade the requirements of liberal democracy by using a worn-out gimmick: ‘Israel is a special case’. Israel can be a democratic state where most of its residents have some awareness and some connection to their Judaism, but any other interpretation serves to discriminate against the rights of the Arab minority.1

This is how radical Israeli journalist Chaim Bar’am in his column in Jerusalem’s local newspaper, Kol Ha’ir, summed up the case against the democratic legitimacy of Israel’s definition as a Jewish state. Such a definition, Bar’am and others in Israel and beyond tell us, contradicts the universal ‘requirements of liberal democracy’ that override any plea of local specificity. This view is regularly presented as if it were a self-evident truth requiring no detailed argumentation. The precise reasons for which liberal democracy, international legitimacy and the principle of equality are supposed to rule out a nation-state for one of the two peoples in the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean while simultaneously requiring it for the other remain a mystery.

The denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state is not confined to a few radical activists. A significant group of Israeli academics have adopted this outlook and express it in publications in Israel and overseas. Over the last few years, the theory that there is an irreconcilable and fundamental contradiction between democratic values and the definition of Israel as a Jewish state has enjoyed expressions of support from representatives of different academic disciplines including sociology, political science, law, philosophy, geography and history.

The alleged contradiction between the Jewish character of the state and the principles of democracy is described by the people in question as a fundamental incompatibility – not as a tension between two legitimate values. Tension between values, in and of itself, is no indication that one of the competing values is illegitimate and ought to be given up. For example, much of modern democratic politics centres on the tension between individual liberty and equality. Every free society grapples with the conflict between civil liberties and the need to protect public safety. Educational systems struggle with the need to provide equal opportunity and close social gaps without giving up on competition, achievement and excellence. The tension between economic development and protection of the environment is one of the important characteristics of developed modern societies. Between multiculturalism and many of the other values of modern liberalism – for example, gender equality – there is often considerable tension (not always acknowledged with sufficient candour).

In all of these cases there are tensions that create difficult dilemmas and legitimate arguments between people who prioritize different values, or interpret one value in a way that minimizes the tension with another. However, we do not hear that a person cannot believe both in liberty and in equality and that he or she must make an unequivocal choice between the two.

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