Chemi Shalev Analysis Planted by Netanyahu and Co., Nation-state Law Is a Time Bomb Exploding in Israel’s Face
Israel’s new nation-state law
is loathsome, damaging, divisive and mainly superfluous, but its
passage won’t make Israelis’ blood boil. Some agree with the law and
others are apathetic, while its staunch opponents quickly recognized
that the campaign to fight discrimination against gay men, sparked by
the concurrent passage of a new Knesset bill on surrogacy,
has a greater potential of sparking mass protests. The nation-state law
injects poison into the country’s relations with its non-Jewish
minorities, but in the final analysis, after the removal of some of its
more controversial clauses, it won’t make much of a difference in the
day-to-day lives of most Israelis.
Nonetheless, as far
as Israel’s standing and image are concerned, the new law is a
mega-attack, a thermo-nuclear onslaught, a landmark that will henceforth
divide before and after. Benjamin Netanyahu was right, therefore, to describe it as a “defining moment.” Scores of Breaking the Silence activists, hundreds of B’Tselem reports on the occupation and thousands of BDS
proponents, all of which the government cynically holds responsible for
its bad name, could never have inflicted such profound, comprehensive
and long-lasting damage as Netanyahu and his coalition did by passing
the new bill. In Donald Trump’s America, they might have been accused of
treason.
The damage won’t be expressed in the
few formal protests issued by foreign governments, especially European.
The international community has other, more existential concerns right
now, emanating from the growing awareness that the world’s greatest
superpower is headed by a president who is unintelligible, at best,
unstable, at worst and possibly beholden to a foreign government. In any
case, the only protest that Netanyahu and most Israelis care about
would have to come from the White House: Barack Obama
personally blocked passage of the nation-state law, but Trump probably
hasn’t heard about it, and if he has, is clueless as to what it all
means, and even if he understands, then he doesn’t give a hoot. This is
the glory of what Netanyahu describes as the greatest era of relations
between the two countries: Israel can cut its wrists to its heart’s
content, and America won’t lift a finger.
But a dearth of diplomatic démarches won’t mitigate the inherent
destructiveness of the nation-state law. It comes with a built-in
time-release mechanism that ensures that it will taint Israel’s good
name for many years to come. The law, in fact, marks the ground zero of a
new Israel. Its first clause grants the Jewish people exclusive rights
to self-determination, and Netanyahu’s coalition was quick to
self-determine, in essence, that Israel is arrogant, belligerent and
ethnocentric. This is the country’s new reflection in the mirror, and
even if most Israelis prefer to look the other way, the whole world is
watching, and reaching its own conclusions.
The Knesset, with dogged determination and clear
intent, notified the world of Israel’s withdrawal from the ranks of
liberal democracies and of its new affiliation with illiberal,
nationalistic states, in which the values of equality and civil rights,
like those enshrined in Israel’s non-binding Declaration of
Independence, are subservient to the needs of the nation and its land.
Just when Western democracies are on the defensive, and in some cases
fighting for their lives, Israel defects to the other side. It is moving
over into the darkness.
The law accelerates
Israel’s transformation from a liberal democracy into an electoral
democracy, in which the right to vote is enshrined but not the
commitment to equality, minority rights or the rule of law. Last month,
even before the nation-state law was passed, the Sweden-base research
group Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem, acknowledged the mutation. Thus,
it was only proper and fitting that when the law was being approved,
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was still in town as Israel’s most honored guest.
Orban, who has been accused of anti-Semitism, was undoubtedly pleased
with his disciples. Israel and authoritarian, immigrant-hating Hungary
now belong to the very same club.
But the new law’s
biggest casualties so far are American Jews. Many Jewish organizations,
including those who normally refrain from criticizing, lambasted the
nation-state law as discriminatory. For the many more who stayed silent,
the new law is like a poisoned dagger to the heart. The loyalty of
most, though far from all, Jewish Americans relies on the perception -
or the illusion, if you prefer - that Israel is a “shining city on the
hill”, as Ronald Reagan described the United States, and not a bully
country that torments its minorities. But in a week in which the Knesset
proudly tries to silence Breaking the Silence, Israeli police arrests a Conservative rabbi for allegedly betrothing someone the Orthodox define as a “mamzer,” a bastard, and the Knesset shamelessly declares Jewish superiority
and relegates Arabic to a lower league, many American Jews be forced to
admit that something is rotten in the State of Israel. For those who
gnashed their teeth and stayed loyal despite Israel’s unilateral nixing
of the Western Wall deal,
its refusal to recognize Reform and Conservative Jews, Netanyahu’s
hostility to Barack Obama, his groveling to Donald Trump, the ongoing
occupation and the death of the peace process - not to mention the spate
of undemocratic laws already approved by this toxic Knesset - the
nation-state law could prove a bridge to far, a straw that breaks the
camel’s back, the last nail in the coffin of their long-held allegiance.
The new law’s supporters have offered myriad
excuses and detailed explanations purporting to prove that the outrage
is overblown. Slovakia and Latvia have similar laws, they rejoice, as if
these two countries, with anti-Semitism running through their
historical veins, are now our new role models. In any case, the problem
is with the forest, not the trees. Whatever its fine print, the Nation
State law is perceived abroad as a contemptuous show of strength by an
aggressive Jewish majority against its Arab minority, which, justifiably
or not, suffers enough discrimination as it is. Even if the new law
does not make Israel into an apartheid state, it certainly seems to be
laying the groundwork, and in any case provides a stellar talking point
for those who claim that apartheid is already here. The great patriots
of Netanyahu’s coalition gave Israel’s enemies a gift of gold, which
they couldn’t have hoped for even in their wildest dreams.
And the truly
horrendous thing is that Netanyahu, his ministers and their legislators
perpetrated this crime against their country for no good reason, out of
their own free will, for pure self-interest and short-term gain, to
garner a few brownie points for their faux-patriotism, to outflank the
rabid right, to portray the left, which opposed the law, as defeatists
and traitors. For such measly returns, the ruling coalition shamed
Israel, tarnished whatever is left of its good name and cast it as
chauvinistic and narrow-minded. The only democracy in the Middle East,
many will conclude, has grown tired of itself.
The proximity to the mourning day of Tisha B’Av,
which falls on Sunday, is a good opportunity to remember that the
Second Temple didn’t really fall because of “baseless hatred”, as the
Talmud asserts, nor because of idol worship, incest and bloodshed, as
their disciples contended. The seeds of destruction were planted many
years before, in the days, among others, of King Alexander Yanai, aka
Janneus, the Hasmonean dynasty’s greatest conqueror. He expanded the
territory of Israel, declared himself king, vested all legal and
judicial powers in himself, incited and spread division, sparked a civil
war, misread his strategic situation and abandoned the alliance with
Rome, which had sustained his predecessors. A hundred years later, with
the kingdom in tatters, the Jews at each other’s throats and the legions
of Rome storming Jerusalem’s gates, it was the Jewish nation and its
state that paid the ultimate price.
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