I don’t mean to come off as a dope, but I have trouble understanding why some people think it is vitally important that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Here is Aryeh Tepper, writing in The Weekly Standard:
Has Abbas agreed in private conversation to recognize Israel as a Jewish state? If he has, that’s a fine first step, but he has yet to do so publicly, and the real test will be to see if Abbas can sell the idea to the Palestinian public. If he can’t, then there’s nothing to talk about.
It seems to me that the important thing is that the final agreement satisfies Palestinians sufficiently that further armed resistance abates and the Palestinian government is able to keep its commitment to peace by providing adequate security. Whether or not Abbas makes some rhetorical concession just doesn’t seem to matter except as it might indicate a willingness to make a substantive concession.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like all this talk of “a Jewish state” is a relatively new development and is really just a substitute for talking about the right of return in a direct and honest manner. Let’s not forget that more than 20% of Israelis are non-Jewish Arabs, most of whom have accepted Israeli citizenship.
Have I got this wrong?
New development? I wouldn’t go there. But it is definitely related to the right of return. Without any right of return, there is no “Jewish State” because the majority will no longer be Jewish. The entire point of Israel to Zionists is to have a state composed entirely of Jews, or at least 80+%. A “Jewish state” means different things to different people and has never really been defined. But it also has no place in the modern world as far as I’m concerned.
But it also has no place in the modern world as far as I’m concerned.
Exactly. Why should anyone recognize Israel as a Jewish state? I can’t think of any other examples of “XX should be a YY state” that aren’t pretty chilling. Bosnia should be a Serbian state. Texas should be a white state. The United States should be a Christian nation. You could go on and on.
Well Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state. Christians are not allowed to visit Mecca.
It may not be an example worthy of emulation but it is an example, and a nearby one, too.
Presumably that’s how Saudis think of themselves, but we don’t recognize Saudi Arabia as an Islamic state. We recognize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and that’s it. If the Saudis think of themselves as an Islamic state, that’s their business, but they don’t get to force us to define them the same way. What Israel is demanding, in contrast, is that Abbas do just that.
Saudi Arabia considering itself an Islamic state isn’t at all the same thing as Israel demanding that others recognize it as a Jewish state.
Good point.
The “Jewish state” is not a religious state like Saudi Arabia, even though it doesn’t provide for civil marriage but only the religious kind performed (for Jews) only by Orthodox rabbis. It’s really a racial state (hence the right of return to all who meet the ancestry criteria regardless of religious belief or practice, and the tolerance of the haredim who don’t even accept the state–what can you do, they’re Jewish!). Which is why the unpleasant term apartheid finally applies. It’s not a new concept, but the emphasis on it is new, and I’m pretty sure it is, as other commenters are saying, a way for Likudniks to prevent themselves from getting pressured to make a deal. They hope to somehow out-survive the Palestinians. What will instead happen is that all educated young Jews will ultimately leave for more tolerant places, and the country will turn into a kind of Lebanese protectorate of warlords and Lubavitcher shtetls.
Saudi Arabia is run by fundamentalists. There was no prohibition on Christians visiting holy places until those nut jobs took over. Does Israel consider itself a modern nation? It can’t have it both ways.
One more thing. To become Muslim, one takes what’s called shihada with a shaykh. It’s essentially an avowal and then the shaykh signs your certificate. Now you can go to any of the holy places. Becoming Jewish is a far more involved process. One could take shihada on Monday, visit Mecca on Tuesday, get baptized on Wednesday and then spend the next year converting to Judaism. If one is already Jewish, however, no problem because the conversions away from Judaism won’t be recognized by Jews of the State of Israel. Jews behave as if their religion were an ethnicity.
I say this an oddball member of the tribe who has practiced other religions including Christianity and Islam. I’ve taken shadada so one could say I’m a Muslim Jew, though in reality all such labels have lost meaning for me. They apply only to the outer services of these religions. Dig a couple of inches down in either and one finds the very same teachings. Even the words are nearly identical. I can say shalom aleichem or salaam alaykum. Both terms mean exactly the same thing.
“There was no prohibition on Christians visiting holy places until those nut jobs took over.”
There may not have been an explicit prohibition defined by the state that controlled Makkah, but it was very clearly the case that non-Muslims were not welcome and would most likely be lynched if detected. I am no advocate for the Saudi regime, who seem despicable in many ways (including their Wahhabist destruction of the historic buildings of Makkah), but you can trace back an effective prohibition on non-Muslims to long before they came to power.
Depends what is meant by modern. Like so much of western thought, it is a secularized version of ideas found in the Bible and traditional commentary. However, being secularized, it is no longer traditional, but modern. Statist Zionism is a holdover from the 19th century. On the other hand, I understand that by modern, Seabe means the world of today, and of course I agree with the statement.
On the other hand the fundamentalists, both Christians and Jews, are aiming towards a revival of the Temple kingdom of ancient times. In the present-day context (we are living in the present day after all), this has all the characteristics of fascism rather than traditional religion. Hence I cannot believe this is a correct religious interpretation.
So, right, why should anyone recognize Israel as a Jewish state? It makes sense in the context of 19th-20th century theories of nationalism. But in effect, does any country today actually recognize the State of Israel as the JEWISH state? They recognize it as a state within the world nation-state system, in which such concepts as Jewish state, Christian state, Islamic state, do not really cut any mustard.
The irony is that the state of Israel exists only because that very system gave it formal recognition as a state in 1948.
It appears the president is trolling Max Blumenthal lol:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-02/obama-to-israel-time-is-running-out
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/running-process-urgency.html
Nothing more, nothing less.
Israel was perfectly willing to sign a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan with any “Jewish state” recognition clause. The Likudnicks know that even if Abbas agrees to a “Jewish state” that the Palestinian people will not accept it. So that lets Israel blame the Palestinians for “not wanting peace” when the current efforts fall apart on the “Jewish state” question.
Exactly. Palestinians could no more recognize Israel as a “Jewish State” than Jewish-Americans could accept America as a “Christian State”. That’s why Netanyahu is demanding it.
I suspect the 20% Arab population is precisely who they aren’t forgetting. I believe the Arab population is growing at a faster rate than the Jewish population, and then my God, what if there was a peaceful Palestinian nation right next door, also with a growing population? They’d better make sure they stay on the right side of the border, or else Israel won’t be able to stay a Jewish state and a democracy for very much longer.
18 of the 22 members of the Arab League do not recognize the State of Israel….but the Palestinians must recognize Israel before peace negotiations can go forward? What BS.
It seems to me that you’re right, this is a new formulation, and has been elevated to a new state rhetoric by the horrible Netanyahu and his right wing extremist allies.
We used to previously hear the demand from the days of Arafat that Palestinians had to recognize Israel’s right to exist. That obstacle seems to have been cleared, and now we see this “Jewish state” lingo as the new litmus test of negotiations.
First, what exactly do the Likudniks mean when they say this? Does it have a practical meaning to them? How do they answer the question? I think Prof Cole has been writing of new “ethnic nationalism” laws and regs that have been advanced by Netanyahu, such as making new citizens acknowledge the “Jewish and democratic” character of Israel. The rhetoric certainly implies acknowledging a permanent primacy of “Jewishness”, doesn’t it?
Second, why is it so crucially important that other peoples and governments parrot ISRAEL’s precise political conception of itself in order to conduct diplomacy? Does every nation have to acknowledge this rhetoric in order to conduct business with Israel? Is this just a Palestinian-specific demand, and why is that? And if it’s not just Palestinian specific, why isn’t it simply a poison pill as described by upyer?
It’s called “Moving The Goalposts”.
The idea of Israel as a Jewish state is absolutely not new, but goes back to a dispute within Zionism itself, between statist and non-statist (or cultural) Zionism.
Jerry Haber has written a lot on this. For example:
http://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2009/08/adam-kirschs-war-with-cultural-zionism.html
(Note for clarity: Where he writes: “This is the view of the Magnes-circle that is dominant in Zionist historiography”, he does not mean it is the Magnes-circle’s view or that it is the view that is dominant in Zionist historiography. Quite the contrary, he means that this is how the Magnes-circle is viewed in the dominant Zionist historiography.)
Gives Israel cover to continue its apartheid civilization.
To me a state based on ethno religious foundations without equal rights is illegitimate but that’s just me. And yes this by its important for Hispanic to fight for black rights or a straight to fight for gay rights in America.
There are no serious negotiations going on over Israel and Palestine. The Israeli government is running out the clock until its settlement plan is completely a fait accompli. And then the world will be shocked a new refugee crisis. And do nothing.
It doesn’t matter what Abbas says privately or publicly the march of settlements will continue.
“Jewish state” now means “minority-controlled apartheid Jewish-dominated state”. And it applies to all of the territory under Israeli control–to the Jordan River.
“Jewish state” now means a theocratic non-democracy.
It sounds to me like President Obama is calling Netanyahu on his bullshit (from the article linked above):
I think the right of return used to belong to the Palestinians who became refugees from their homeland when Isreal was formed.
Now that kind intent has been changed so the language means that all Jews have a right to live in Isreal. The Palestinians have been turned into a slave class by this madness.
Yes. Right to return concerns the rights of Palestinians to return to lands within Israel that were seized from them after WWII. Is a human rights principle and not limited.
Israel’s open door policy for all Jews is “Law of Return.” It’s entirely possible that many European and Russian Jewish communities had no ancestral links to the “holy lands.”
Have the Israeli’s recognized the Palestinian state? No. It’s a poison pill and an excuse to continue to trade security for Palestinian land.