Opposition MKs On ‘Jewish State’ Bill: Since When Is ‘Israel’ A Jewish Idea?

Jerusalem, May 10 – Lawmakers opposed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s latest legislation proposal are challenging the notion that a Jewish country, born of millennia of Jewish longing for a homeland, and embodying the dreams and prophecies of countless Jews throughout history, should be considered Jewish.

Netanyahu’s government has submitted a bill that would expressly define Israel as a Jewish state, a move aimed at underlining the Jewish attachment to the land in the face of continued deligitimization efforts by opponents in the Middle East and farther afield. Opposition to the bill has of course come from various Arab members of Knesset, and they have been joined by left-wing Meretz, but otherwise Zionist parties have also voiced their objections, saying that their Zionism should not be mistaken for the position that Jews should be able to define their country as such.

“It is a mistake to seek to ensure the Jewishness of Israel,” said Tzipi Livni, head of the Hatnuah Party, who in 2005 supported the removal of Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip by claiming that the move would help make Israel more Jewish. The same considerations are routinely voiced by others who favor withdrawal from areas heavily populated by non-Jews, others who have taken pains to explain that this piece of legislation is somehow different.

The country’s national anthem specifically speaks of the yearning of the Jewish heart for a country in which the Jewish people could forge its own future, gazing longingly across continents and centuries at what is now Israel, but that is a historical technicality, says Labor Party chairman and Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog. “My own grandfather worked ceaselessly to help develop within Jewish law a corpus of thought aimed specifically at addressing the challenges of running a modern state,” he said, referring to his namesake, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, a revered figure. “That’s a nice bit of intellectual achievement, I guess.”