Why Israel can't be a 'Jewish State'  
by Prof Sari Nusseibeh   -  Al Quds University, Jerusalem        
30 September 2011

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.

Mohammed and Ibrahim

friends,
please help give wings to this posting. it is long, it is graphic, and it is not likely to reach pulblic through mainstream media.
thanks, tal

dear all,

this afternoon, Ibrahim's heart stopped beating. We don't have words

right now. Allahu yirhamu, may he rest in peace.

Mohammed is 15 year old. He is Ibrahim’s cousin. Mohammad is very tall

for his age. He has big hands, large feet, and beautiful dark eyes.

Today, his head is shaven. In a few years, he will grow into a handsome

young man.

When we first met him, Mohammad’s face was rigid and tense. He didn’t

speak. His eyes only appeared to take notice of us. His eyes moved and

stared at us in a way that made me wonder whether he was still terrified

and in shock or whether he’s able to speak.

His father Atef moved to the end of the bed to show us Mohammad’s

bandaged legs. Before he even touched the blanket, Mohammad’s body

turned more rigid, and he started screaming. It was a terrible sound, a

sound I have never heard before, a sound that made me doubt whether I

was strong enough to witness this.

Like a chilling alarm-bell, the sound ebbs off, only to start again

whenever Mohammad suspects anyone might be about to touch him, when he

hears an airplane, during his sleep when he has nightmares.

Again and again he screams without any external triggers, from

unbearable attacks of pain. Mohammad cries that he wants to die, he

cries that he wants to go back to school, that he wants to see his

friends, that he wants to go home, he cries when he talks to his mother

on the phone.

Again and again, he begs his father to make sure he is given pain killer

injections before his bandages are changed, but his doctor has ordered

to cut back on injections, Mohammad could get addicted to them.

Where it is not covered in bandages – along his arms, on his fingers,

toes and his face – Mohammad’s skin is layered in various colors. The

oldest layer is dark brown, the next layer appears very pale and soft,

and the last layer is the angry, bright pink of his flesh. On his nails,

there are the rests of Henna, from a wedding he went to recently. On his

long fingers and toes, there are several rough, black spots. It is hard

to grasp that these are patches of scorched flesh.

When we talked to him, when we told him that people are asking about

Ibrahim and him, Mohammad briefly calmed down. With visible effort, he

tries to tell us things, he wants to tell us what happened and how it

happened, and he wants to tell it on his own.

About an hour before the Iftar on August 19, Mohammad got bored. He goes

out to play with his 12 year old cousin Ibrahim on the street in front

of his family home and the Wafa hospital in Sija’iya, in Gaza. The boys

are hungry and try to distract themselves until it is time to eat.

Mohammad’s uncle tells him to bring his baby brother Khamis (1 year and

a half old) inside. Mohammad does so and goes back out to play with

Ibrahim. He doesn’t remember hearing something out of the ordinary, he

only remembers playing, and then his memory gets blurred. He keeps

shutting his eyes and his speech cuts off, he has difficulties

concentrating. He remembers his cousin Ibrahim lying on top of him, and

he remembers a burning feeling like fire inside his chest. And above

all, he remembers pain, he is still feeling pain, sometimes all he can

say is pain.

Atef is Mohammed’s father. Atef didn’t see the single missile from the

unmanned drone that hit his son and his nephew. That single targeted

both children specifically. That single missile from the unmanned drone

was not mistakenly fired amidst a barrage of attacks but was the sole

attack in the entire area at that time. Atef remembers being called and

seeing both boys covered in blood. Since that day, his life has turned

upside down.

He was told the boys were lucky that the missile exploded on soft

ground; had it been on asphalt, they would have been killed, like the

seven others that were killed in air strikes that day. Instead, they are

two of five people that survived and were left injured.

After 10 days at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, Atef and his brother Adnan

accompanied their sons to the Israeli Kaplan hospital in Rehovot. Both

men received permission to move inside the hospital compound only. Their

ID’s have been taken away from them. They were granted a little room in

the hospital building, where they can sleep and take a shower. But the

brothers spend most of their time with their sons. When they first

arrived at Kaplan hospital, Mohammad underwent an eight-hour surgery,Ibrahim a five-hour surgery.

Atef translates for Mohammad and functions as his son’s nurse. Every few hours, he helps four nurses amid pained screams of his son to change his position and spare him bedsores.

Atef explained to us about his son’s condition. ( All medical

information are according to the information given by Adnan and ‘Atef,

we were unable to speak to the medics ). His son sustained burns of

various degrees on his face, along his left arm and hand, and on both

lower legs. The missile blew off the flesh of his right hand, abdomen

and both thighs. The medical team at Kaplan hospital replaced these

parts with flesh taken from the back of Mohammad’s thighs. The thighbone on one of his legs is fractured four times and was pushed out of the leg. The medics reset it. It is now fixed with a splinter and screws.

Both legs are twisted with his swollen feet pointing sharply to the

right. At Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, the medical staff had performed a

horizontal incision along the lower end of his abdomen to check for

shrapnel and other injuries. At Kaplan hospital, the procedure was

repeated with two vertical incisions along his lower abdomen. Mohammad doesn’t know this yet, but one testicle had to be removed.

Until a few days ago, Mohammad was mostly sedated, but now, he remains awake until he gets more painkillers. Atef spends most of his time in the small room with his son, feeding him cold water whenever Mohammad asks for it, adjusting pillows, blankets, and a fan, calling for the nurse, and mostly watching helplessly as his son screams in pain. At

night, he barely sleeps. Mohammad has nightmares of missiles attacking him again, he thinks he is burning up from the inside, and the pain becomes intolerable. This morning, Atef finally shaved off Mohammad’s thick hair to prevent him from tearing out more chunks in bouts of pain. Gradually, Mohammad makes attempts to eat, so Atef feeds him soft white bread dunked in cold milk.

Atef would like to install a TV above Mohammad’s bed to distract him

from his pain and fears, but he cannot afford the 700NIS the hospital

asks. Sometimes, he calls in random visitors of other patients just so

Mohammad can see other people beside his father, uncle and the medical team. And indeed, when we got up to leave the room in order to visitnIbrahim, Mohammad got anxious, and he begged his father to tell us to stay, to not leave him alone. He calmed down only when we left our bags with him to guarantee him that we will return.

Like his brother Adnan, Atef looks worn out, exhausted. On top of the

daily turmoil at the hospital that has become his life, he worries about

his 11 children and his wife back in Gaza. He knows that, like Ibrahim’s

siblings, the younger ones have nightmares, too. They have seen their

brothers covered in blood.

Days ago, Atef ran out of credit on his mobile phone, and he hasn’t been

able to talk to his family – or anyone else – since. When we gave him a

telephone card, he immediately called his wife and passed the phone to

Mohammad.

When we asked Atef and Adnan what they need, they replied “money”. Like the majority of the adults in Gaza, Adnan and ‘Atef are unemployed and have been living off the meager Gazan equivalent of social security

(wakala). The medical care of their sons is fortunately covered by some

agreement between the PA and Israeli authorities, both men can sleep at the hospital and eat the food prepared for the patients, but after 11

days, they cannot bring themselves to touch it any more. They cannot

afford to refill their mobiles phones to call their wifes and children

back in Gaza, they cannnot afford the sandwiches or drinks at the

Hospital cafeteria, and even if they could pay the considerably higher

prices of Israeli supermarkets, they are not allowed to leave the

hospital to shop. When we met them, they have run out of essentials,

such as soap (which they use in lieu of shampoo/shower gel). They worry how they can possibly sustain their extremely difficult lives and

conditions at the Israeli hospital for the next few months.

We first heard about 12 year old Ibrahim in an article that detailed

that he lost both of his hands while playing football due to a missile

attack. It turns out Ibrahim’s condition is much more severe than that.

After eight days in coma at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, where medical

staff were unable to treat his hands due to lack of adequate equipment,

so they had to cut them off to avoid gangrene, Ibrahim finally regained

consciousness. He was still awake when he passed through Erez crossing two days later together with his cousin (Mohammed who suffered from the same attack) his father and uncle. When they arrived at Kaplan hospital, he had fallen back into a coma. He immediately underwent a five-hour surgery. Since then, Ibrahim has not regained consciousness.

Ibrahim sustained various degrees of burns all over his body. The bones

in both of his legs are fractured, and an alarming portion of his flesh

was blown off in the explosion. After seven days at Kaplan hospital, he

needed blood transfusions due to internal bleeding. Ibhrahim’s liver is

damaged, his lungs are punctured, he has shrapnel in one eye, he is deaf in one ear, he sustained burns of various degrees all over his body.

When we went to see Ibrahim at the intensive care, his condition was

very critical. We were not allowed into the room to avoid infection,

although only a few days earlier, a visitor had been able to see him.

Ibrahim’s doctor explained: “you don’t want to see him, he looks worse

than what you could imagine”. The doctor also said it was unclear

whether Ibrahim will come through in the end.

Adnan is the father of seven children. Adnan is Ibrahim’s father. Adnan

disclosed that the physical condition and the smell of Ibrahim were so

shocking and distressing it cut off anyone’s appetite for days. He said

the doctors encouraged him to talk to his son, and so he tries. He tells his son that he is there with him, but most of the time he doesn’t

know what to say anymore.Adnan is traumatized and physically and mentally exhausted. He is just waiting and hoping.