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The Jewish State: A Century Later, Updated With a New Preface

University of California Press

Can a state be both Jewish and democratic? Over a century since the Zionist idea began to gather momentum, argument continues over what it means for a state to be Jewish. To those hostile to the very concept, it is clear that Jewishness is antithetical to democracy: “To the extent that Israel is a Jewish state, it cannot be a democratic state.” 1

Such a view essentially equates “Jewish” with race or religion. A state employing racial criteria would clearly be exclusivist (racist), while a state based on religious principles would by definition be theocratic. Some unsympathetic critics attach both definitions to Israel; they bracket Jews with Christians and Muslims (all living under “religious authority and religious law” in Israel), while arguing at the same time that a “sovereign state of the Jewish people” is the same as a “sovereign state of the White people” or of the Anglo-Saxon people.2 Most Jews, however, reject the simple equation of Jewishness with race or religion. Jews in Israel and elsewhere clearly comprise a mixed racial group; furthermore, one can either cease to be a Jew or decide to become a Jew by personal choice, without regard to genetics. And while there is a Jewish religion, nonobservant Jews are still considered Jews. Israel demonstrates that a “Jewish” state can operate largely by secular rather than religious law—precisely the major criticism of Israel made by religious Jews.

What, then, is the commonly accepted meaning of “Jewishness”? For most Jews, or for that matter for most outside observers, it is a common national or ethnic identity as a historically developed community of people with distinctive cultural, linguistic, and other attributes. This includes a distinctive Judaic religion, which makes Jews unusual, though not unique, among ethnic groups. Jews are a people, a nation (in the original sense of the word), an ethnos. While the sense of peoplehood has been diluted in modern liberal assimilationist societies such as that of the United States, or even reduced in some cases to religious expressions alone or to nothing at all, this characterization of Jews in history is still valid. It has been true for most Jews, in most places, at most times.

Consequently, a Jewish state, as simply a state with a largely Jewish population and a dominantly Jewish culture, is not necessarily any more undemocratic than any state structured around a dominant ethnic group or groups (in other words, than several dozen states in the world today). The question is, first, whether the dominant group or groups practice democracy among themselves, and second, whether they extend it to citizens from other ethnic groups. This is a question to be answered by observation, not by plays on words or a priori assumptions. Finland is not undemocratic simply because it contains a significant Swedish minority while at the same time maintaining its Finnish character. One must examine the actual functioning of Finnish politics. Likewise, a Jewish state is not by definition undemocratic or democratic. We have to observe the Israeli political system as it operates in order to pass judgment. That is what this book attempts to do.

But isn’t ethnicity much more important in Israel than in progressive, social-democratic, postnationalistic Finland? To be sure, the importance of ethnicity does vary. On one end of the spectrum is the perfectly liberal modern secular state, ethnically neutral in laws and political behavior, and committed to universalistic norms that transcend the narrow confines of race, creed, or national origin (whether such a state actually exists is another question). At the other end is the state that clings to its ethnic identity explicitly, adopting a particularistic orientation rooted not in general principles but in its own traditions and values. This tension between the pull of universalism and the demands of particularism is familiar to anyone who knows Zionist history, because it has always been a basic point of contention. Was the Jewish state to be “a state like other states,” by which advocates usually meant something on the progressive European model? Or was it to be something uniquely Jewish, an expression of the Jewish people’s own history, traditions, and way of life? Or some synthesis of the two? Though Jewish history seems to have been intensely particularistic, universalist ideas were well represented in Zionism. The debate accompanied the movement from its very first days.3

The argument has implications for how one judges the Israeli political system. Those impressed by the particularism or uniqueness of the Jewish people sometimes use this as a basis for judging Israel by a different set of standards. This group includes both critics and sympathizers. Many outside observers, including professed friends, would hold Israel to a higher standard than other states, on grounds of the unique historical experience of Jews or the unique moral importance of Israel as a haven from antisemitism. Some Israelis and Israel supporters, on the other hand, argue that the same history of persecution makes it understandable, and excusable, for Israel to be judged more leniently (Jews having, so often, been the victims of widespread violation of international norms by others).

Both of these arguments are rejected here. Even if we decide that Israeli political traditions and institutions are quite different, bearing little in common with the histories of other peoples, this does not justify invoking different standards. The circumstances under which nations function should be taken into account (for example, the seriousness of threats to security). But to cite the uniqueness of a people’s character or past as cause for either unique condemnation or unique approbation is to enter the treacherous terrain of the double standard. Therefore, wherever Israel falls on the particularist-universalist spectrum, the working assumption here is that Israeli democracy must be judged by the same standards applied elsewhere—no more and no less.

But where does Israel fall on this spectrum? Is it true that Jewish history and traditions are biased toward particularism? Actually the apostles of pure universalism should find much to like in Theodor Herzl’s original vision of the Jewish state. The title of Herzl’s 1896 manifesto that galvanized the emergence of the Zionist movement, Der Judenstaat, usually translated as The Jewish State, is more accurately rendered as The Jews’ State. There was little that was “Jewish” either in the arguments for the state—basically as a response to antisemitism—or in the nature of the state itself. As later depicted in his utopian novel Altneuland (or Old-New Land), Herzl’s “Jews’ state” was basically an empty framework into which he poured various progressive ideas then current in Europe and in which Jews, Muslims, and even Christian Europeans could feel equally comfortable.4 Needless to say, many Zionist thinkers (especially Ahad Ha’am, the proponent of “spiritual” Zionism) condemned the near-total absence of Jewish content in Herzl’s background, thinking, and program. But for Herzl, who dominated the movement in its early years, the aim was indeed “a...