A constitutional amendment that aimed to assert Israel’s Jewishness has stirred up a political hornets’ nest while seeking to offset the Jewish state’s judicial revolution
By AMOTZ ASA-ELUpdated: AUGUST 22, 2018 10:49druze leaders in protest(photo credit: CORINNA KERN/REUTERS)
Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square had seen many rallies over the decades, but none resembled this warm Saturday night’s, in which most speakers were non-Jews, and the thousands facing them were dominated by the Druze minority, whose five-color flags mixed with Israel’s blue and white.Unlike the 1981 rally in which Menachem Begin incited here a roaring multitude against what he portrayed as Labor’s social arrogance – this one was not about rich and poor; unlike the following year’s protest subsequent to the massacre of Palestinians by Israel’s Christian allies – this one was not about Left and Right; and unlike the 1995 rally, which ended with the murder that gave this vast plaza its name, this one was not about issues of war and peace.Instead, the throngs who flocked August 4 to Tel Aviv’s City Hall heeded the invitation of Israel’s Druze community, headed by spiritual leader Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif and joined by Druze mayors, lawmakers, and retired generals and colonels as well as cohorts of Jewish sympathizers, all of whom decried the Knesset’s passage on July 19 of the Nation-State Law.Much less consensually, tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs and Jews gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on the night of August 11 to protest the Nation-State Law. Some protesters were photographed carrying Palestinian and Israeli flags, while others held signs such as “Resist apartheid!” While some chanted “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies,” others were filmed singing, “With spirit and blood, we will free Palestine!”The new law, which declares Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, has stirred up a political hornets’ nest while spotlighting Israel’s broader constitutional predicament, and arguably offsetting the Jewish state’s 26-year-old judiciary revolution.AFTER STATING that the Land of Israel is the Jewish people’s birthplace, and after establishing such things as the state’s anthem, symbol, capital and flag, the new law declares Hebrew as Israel’s sole official language and “the development of Jewish settlement” as “a national value” that Israel “will act to encourage and promote.”The minorities’ qualms with the 11-clause law is that earlier drafts, which included a clause that said Israel protects its minorities, were shed, and that Arabic was degraded from an official language to one that enjoys “special status.”“We have always been proud of the state, and never questioned its Jewish identity,” said Sheikh Tarif, whose community of 140,000 had struck an alliance with the Jewish state at its birth, fighting since then in all its wars, in which it lost 421 men.“We believed that part of the state’s Jewish ethos would be to grant full equality to its non-Jewish citizens, and first among them the loyal Druze,” continued the spiritual leader, who spoke in front of a large Israeli flag while wearing his trademark black gown and red-topped white turban.And after asserting that “as the military cemeteries attest,” no one can teach the Druze community about sacrifice and loyalty, the thickly mustachioed sheikh countered in flawless Hebrew, “Despite our loyalty, the state does not see in us equals.”Voiced among others by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yusuf Mishlav, former IDF Homefront Commander, and Police-Inspector Hasin Fares, the former commander of the Israel Border Police, the Druze demand is that the new law be amended so it will expressly enshrine the community’s equality.Meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Druze leaders following the law’s passage have so far resulted in yet more hard feelings, as Netanyahu offered assorted budgetary incentives, but on the legislative front refused to retreat one inch.While embracing Bedouin IDF veterans who voiced grievances similar to theirs, the Druze dissenters distanced themselves from Arab lawmakers whose opposition to the law is perceived as part of their ongoing effort to dilute Israel’s Jewish character and commitments.The Arab legislators’ national rather than civic agenda became apparent in the separate rally that they gathered, in same Rabin Square the following Saturday night, where Palestinian flags checkering the crowd played into Netanyahu’s hands.“Many of the demonstrators want to abolish the Law of Return, the anthem, and the flag, and to turn Israel into an Israeli-Palestinian state, or ‘a state of all its citizens,’” the prime minister said the next morning, and concluded, “The Nation-State Law is needed to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish state.”Yet the Druze struggle, unlike the Israeli-Arab protest, has been joined by IDF generals whose Israeli patriotism no one doubts, and by war veterans who, like Brig.-Gen. Amal Assad, are card-carrying Likud members.Moreover, the Nation-State bill was opposed not only by Likud’s Jewish detractors, but also by some of its own doyens, like MK Bennie Begin, who served in two of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governments, and Dan Meridor, who was Netanyahu’s finance minister and Yitzhak Shamir’s justice minister.Most embarrassingly for Netanyahu, the bill was vehemently attacked by Likud’s elder statesman, 92-year-old Moshe Arens, who served as defense minister under Begin, Shamir, and also Netanyahu, and in fact sparked Netanyahu’s political career when he made him ambassador to the UN.LIKE THE law's opponents from the mainstream opposition, Arens warned in advance that the bill would provoke Israel’s minorities; that its declarations of Israel’s Jewishness merely stated the obvious, and that the bill was not worth its political price.
