Haaretz Editorial Don’t Fix It, Just Nix It
In an urgent discussion on Tuesday, a special committee to advance the nation-state bill approved the bill’s new version
for a preliminary Knesset vote. The nation-state bill is the rightist
government’s flagship piece of legislation and is intended to violate
the equal rights of Israel’s Arabs, which were promised in the
Declaration of Independence.
Despite the concessions and omissions made in the bill’s last draft, the new approved version also confirms that it is a bad, unnecessary proposal.
This is demonstrated by the deletion of the clause saying the bill’s
goals are to “ensure in a Basic Law Israel’s values as a Jewish and
democratic state in the spirit of the principles in the declaration on
establishing the State of Israel.” This clause, which hinted at the full
equality ensured in the Declaration of Independence, was omitted as
“compensation” for omitting a clause about the supremacy of the Jewish
nation to “any other legislation.” In other words, in the distorted
value system of the bill’s sponsors, they needed a balance: If you can’t
subordinate the law book and basic laws to the values of Judaism, then
in exchange, the democratic part must also be deleted.
The
fear of “surplus democracy” runs as a theme throughout the proposal’s
new version. The current bill enables de facto geographic separation
between Jews and Arabs, due to the “separate settlement clause.”
Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit was right to make it clear that he
opposed this clause. His representative, Deputy State Attorney Eyal
Zandberg, explained that this clause was tantamount to “blatant
discrimination against human beings, which is not in keeping with
Israel’s values as a Jewish and democratic state. This clause means that
there can be a sign in the acceptance committee saying ‘no entry to
non-Jews.’”
Even if the bill undergoes other changes and adjustments, it will undermine the existing balance between the state’s democratic basis and Jewish basis,
which is already ensured in quasi-constitutional basic laws and
numerous ordinary laws. No democracy allows legislation that establishes
its national character without granting complete equality to
minorities, both in legislation and in declaration.
If
the nation-state bill’s goal is indeed to be Israel’s identity card,
then the party leaders concocting the current bill know full well that
Israel already has one: the Declaration of Independence. But instead of
celebrating it, they are undermining it, and by so doing they are also
undermining Israel’s seminal fundamental values, first and foremost the
value of equal rights for all the state’s citizens.
The
bill’s legislative process clarifies to its supporters that it isn’t in
keeping with a democracy committed to its citizens’ equal rights. This
is a harmful bill, one that will have a bad effect on the attitude of
Israel’s non-Jewish citizens toward the state that wants to legalize
discrimination against them, and on the world’s regard for Israeli
democracy. The right thing to do is to renounce this bill.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
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