📘 ❞ On the Israeli Demand for Recognition of a ‘Jewish State’ ❝ كتاب ــ ساري نسيبة

عن كتاب On the Israeli Demand for Recognition of a ‘Jewish State’:
The Israeli government’s current mantra is that
the Palestinians must recognize a ‘Jewish State’. Of
course, the Palestinians have clearly and repeatedly

recognized the State of Israel as such in the 1993 Oslo Ac-
cords (which were based on an Israeli promise to establish a

Palestinian state within five years—a promise shattered now
for fourteen years) 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 emphasis on a ‘Jewish State’. The Zion-

ist Organization preferred at first to use the description ‘Jew-
ish 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 state of Israel for all its citizens
or a 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 con-
sider the subject dispassionately, the idea of a ‘Jewish State’

is logically and morally problematic because of its legal, reli-
gious, 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.
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 prob-