Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 2

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 2 

Although Israel is the world's only Jewish State, Judaism is not the official religion of Israel

Judaism is not the official state religion of Israel. Yes, you read that correctly. Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, has not designated Judaism as the official religion of the country.

Judaism is one of five religions recognised by the state – Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Druzism and Bahai and all have equal status in law. Both the concept of the Jewish State and the nature of Judaism itself are hotly debated in Israel and no official constitutional definition of either has ever been made. 

For many (perhaps most) Israelis, being Jewish is not primarily, or even partly, a religious identity and they view their country as Jewish in terms of its history, geography, culture and language rather than faith. 

In a 2018 lecture, former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf said “Zionism is a modern secular rebellion” [against religion]. The depiction of Jews as adhering to a religious faith (Judaism) is a modern European construct that arose out of the Enlightenment. It was embraced enthusiastically by some Jews but ultimately failed to improve the general position and status of Jews in Europe that had been promised by Napoleon and others. That was because Jews were granted rights as individuals adhering to a faith while denying their rights as a people.

Even religious Jews in Israel tend to view their identity in terms of Am Yisrael (the people of Israel) rather than a theologically-defined credo. Restrictions on public transport and commercial activity on the Sabbath, and on the Orthodox rabbinical monopoly on the life-cycle rituals of birth, marriage and death, are widely reviled in Israel; they reflect the longstanding taboo against disturbing the so-called Status Quo of religious life in the country, first established by the Turks and continued by successive British and Israeli administrations. This peculiar historical legacy has been perpetuated by the vagaries of Israeli coalition politics, whereby small religious parties exert disproportionate power, rather than as a result of a national consensus on the perceived need for public life to reflect any particular brand of spiritual observance.

In comparison to other modern democracies, Israel sits closer to the secular than to the religious end of the spectrum. Take the United States and the United Kingdom: almost all US presidents and British prime ministers have been practising Christians. By contrast, almost all Israeli prime ministers have been non-religious, non-observant Jews. Allegiance to Christianity permeates every level of society in the US and UK, including their parliaments, judiciary and national holidays. Anglicanism is the official religion of England, the largest constituent of the United Kingdom, whose monarch is the head of the Church of England and "Defender of the Faith.” While the US is formally a secular state, the words “In God We Trust” have been mandated to appear on American currency since 1957, and are familiar to all who have contact with the institutions of state. No contender for high political office would dream of ending a speech without uttering “God Bless America." 

Such a culture of publicly-proclaimed fervent religiosity is (with rare exceptions) alien to the Israeli political system. It’s a supreme irony that the leaders and institutions of the world’s only self-defined Jewish state are far less religious than their counterparts in so-called “secular” states elsewhere. And yet it is Israel, rather than the US nor the UK, that is repeatedly (and falsely) criticised for its allegedly confessional, theocentric nature. 

The religious nature of many other countries is equally unambiguous. Modern states with a single official state-endorsed religion include Italy, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, at least 24 Muslim-majority countries plus the Palestinian Authority, and six Buddhist-majority countries. Somehow, these countries manage to escape the solemn strictures against fusing church and state that are hurled with stridency against Israel. In the UK and other “secular” European countries, look what happens in the period before Christmas: we get wall-to-wall carols, masses, oratorios, gospel singing and endless speeches, homilies and other references to God and Jesus – as if there were no non-Christians or non-believers in the country. That just doesn’t happen before and during the national holidays in Israel.

Critics will retort that, notwithstanding the formal position of religion in Israel, Jews are nevertheless a privileged group within the country. The Israeli flag and anthems are Jewish, government is dominated by Jews, the Nation State Law declares that Israel is a Jewish state, and the Law of Return favours Jewish immigrants. Superficially, all of this looks a plausible case for the prosecution. But a closer analysis of the evidence reveals a different picture. First, all of these symbols and laws relate explicitly to nationality rather than religion. Second, all citizens of Israel are treated equally under the law, and have equal political, legal, civil and religious rights. This is the epitome of a true liberal democracy, and the only example of one in the entire Middle East. 

Nevertheless, there is a degree of systematic religious discrimination in Israel – against Jews and Jews alone. Jews are the only religious group forbidden to pray at their most sacred site – the Temple Mount. Access to their second most sacred city, Hebron, is strictly limited to a small enclave. Jews are not permitted to live or even enter Area A of the West Bank (the contemporary name for the biblical Jewish homeland of Judea). Moreover, Jews are not permitted to establish “Jewish only” communities in Israel (a deleted clause from the Nation State law draft) while Arabs are. And only Jews are required to undertake military service, disrupting family life, education and employment. 

It is true that the Law of Return favours Jewish immigrants over others in an attempt to reverse two millennia of expulsions, discrimination and massacres. Jews were not only ethnically cleansed by the Roman colonial administration in the first century, they were prevented from returning to their homeland throughout most of the next two thousand years by successive rulers of the land, renamed Syria Palaestina (a gesture of Roman contempt towards the Jews by deliberating renaming Judea after their bitterest enemies, the Philistines). Despite these restrictions, some Jews managed to remain in the country against all the odds though they were, of course, a minority. If ever there was a case for positive discrimination, this is it. Similar laws exist in many other countries with a far weaker case. 

It’s time to lay this canard of Israel’s Jewish nature to rest. The evidence is clear: Israel is not the national embodiment of religious Judaism. Its culture, calendar, symbols and national life are certainly inspired by the Jewish world and yes, even by some aspects of Judaism, but it is far from the ethnocentric, clerical state of popular Western and Arab imagination. Israel is one of the most diverse countries – ethically, culturally and religiously – in the world. No amount of massaging of the facts to suit a preconceived and prejudiced notion can change that reality.

Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 1

The only parts of the Balfour Declaration that remain unfulfilled are those relating to the Jewish people 

As well as the abundant and obsessively hostile propaganda (aka lies) about Israel that surges across social platforms globally, there is a woeful lack of truthful, factual information about that small country, the world's only Jewish state. This series of articles is offered as a modest contribution to the growing body of literature that seeks to redress the balance.

Fact 1. The only parts of the Balfour Declaration that remain unfulfilled are those relating to the Jewish people

You may have heard of the Balfour Declaration. If you haven't, and want to understand the historical context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, you should certainly read it. If you have heard of it, you may nevertheless have been misled about its content, meaning and implications, or you may not have fully grasped the degree to which it was (or wasn't) implemented. Whatever your level of knowledge on this subject, I offer here a few insights which you may find helpful. These are set out in more detail in a booklet published by the politically non-partisan educational NGO StandWithUs [1].

What was the Balfour Declaration?

On 2nd November 1917, the British War Cabinet issued a statement in the form of a letter from Lord Arthur James Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, an Anglo-Jewish dignitary, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The letter stated that:

“His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Balfour Declaration, as this document became known, was a ground-breaking British government statement that recognised the profound and unbroken historical, religious and cultural connection of the Jewish people to the land from which they had been largely expelled, and destroyed as a sovereign nation, by the Romans some 2,000 years earlier, a land that had been renamed “Palestine” by its conquerors.

Furthermore, the Declaration obligated the British government to use its “best endeavours” – meaning that they would implement all reasonable measures rather than merely offer support in principle – to achieve the objective of the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

The Declaration was incorporated, virtually word for word, in two major international agreements – the San Remo Resolution in 1920 and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine that was given to the British Government later that year. That eventually led, though a devious and blood-drenched path, to the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Many commentators, including some who are generally sympathetic to Israel, have suggested that the Declaration was the foundation document of the Jewish state, and that its terms were only partially fulfilled in that Jewish aspirations were met while ignoring those of the Arab population of Palestine and the Middle East. Superficially, this is a plausible argument. But it's wrong.

Let's examine the Declaration carefully. It comprised three parts.

The Declaration's first part (the establishment of the Jewish National Home) was technically achieved in 1948 but remains work in progress as so many of Israel’s neighbours – with the collusion of external allies – continue to seek her destruction. Without a strong army and the expenditure of huge resources on defence, Israel simply could not survive. A National Home, whose existence as a sovereign state continues to be challenged and threatened with annihilation, is a violation of the spirit of the Declaration (and, incidentally, a breach of the UN charter). That is a contemporary reality that even Israel's most bitter enemies acknowledge.

The Declaration's second part (the protection of the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population of Palestine) was rigorously fulfilled through the Israel's Declaration of Independence and the related Basic Laws in Israel. The legal protection of minorities in Israel stands in marked contrast to the position of Jews in Arab states. Although the Declaration did not address Arab national ambitions, those too were granted expression since 22 Arab States were subsequently created. One of these was a Palestinian Arab one, Transjordan, that was brought into being by the British in 1922 in territory that comprised the geographically larger portion of the original Mandatory Palestine – 26 years before Israel declared her independence.

The Declaration's third part (the protection of the status of existing Jewish communities in the diaspora) was entirely ignored throughout the Arab world. On the contrary, Arab governments viciously turned on their Jewish citizens and actively promoted the expulsion of at least 900,000 Jews from countries across the Middle East and North Africa. To this day, none of these countries has accepted responsibility or offered an apology for this large-scale ethnic cleansing, let alone provided even minimal recompense. 

Consequently, it is clear that only the second part (relating to Arab rights within Israel) of the Declaration has actually been fully fulfilled. Curiously, that is the only part that most commentators seem to think wasn’t. 

The first and third parts – those relating to the Jewish people – have yet to be properly implemented and accepted by Israel's neighbours and by much of the international community. 

Surprised? You shouldn't be. As with many of the facts surrounding Israel, reality has been inverted and history rewritten to suit a false narrative. Yet many of Israel's critics are unable or unwilling to recognise this distortion. 

That's what happens when preconceptions, rhetoric or prejudice are permitted to cloud evidence-based judgement. 

1. StandWithUs. Justice and Rebirth for a Historically Oppressed People. The Balfour Declaration, San Remo and the British Mandate    https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/46fc49_47bf6defb804456ead7771dcac145475.pdf
Accessed 25 March 2021

Towards an evidence-based discourse about the Arab-Israeli conflict – who is responsible?

In my first blog, I called for an evidence-based approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That seems entirely uncontentious. I have yet to encounter anyone who opposes it. Why, then, do so many critics of Israel ignore almost all of the evidence?

I can think of a few reasons but let us clarify language at the outset. Evidence does not mean “arguments that I muster to support my point of view” since that sets up an endless reiteration of a vicious circle of prejudice. Evidence means the objectively verifiable facts relating to the conflict. There is no room here for the fatuous post-modernist concept of “competing narratives.” Either something happened or it didn’t.

Perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence that all parties should be capable of affirming relates to the so-called “two sate solution.” The conflict may be characterised as a territorial one between two peoples struggling to establish sovereignty over a tiny scrap of territory. All attempts to mediate have proposed a stunningly obvious and simple answer – share it. The British thought they had implemented such a solution when they carved an Arab state, Transjordan, out of the Jewish National Home in 1922 but that failed to meet Arab aspirations. The Jewish leadership, in an act of extraordinary generosity motivated by a desire for peace, acquiesced both in that initial partition and in later attempts to divide the remaining 22% of Palestine that lay west of the River Jordan. And indeed two states for two peoples (Jewish and Arab) could have been brought into existence in the 1930s had both sides accepted the Peel Commission proposal of 1937.

Why didn’t it happen? The Jewish leadership reluctantly agrees to the idea, subject to negotiation, while the Arab leadership rejected it outright – fact. Then in 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine proposed the same, albeit with slightly different boundaries. Again, it didn’t happen because the Jewish leadership accepted partition while the Arab leadership rejected it – fact. In neither case did the Arab opposition derive from the precise details of the proposal but to its principal. Their view was expressed repeatedly and explicitly – no Jewish state, within whatever borders might be suggested, would be acceptable in any form whatsoever. There are no “competing narratives” and to insist that there are merely obfuscates.

Over the years there have been many opportunities to resolve the conflict through negotiations based on that formula that all moderate commentators agree provides the only means of an equitable settlement. Think of all the misery that could have been avoided had both sides signed up to it when it was first proposed. That is the true tragedy – that the entire conflict and its myriad consequences could have been avoided. That it wasn’t cannot be attributed to anything other than the incontrovertible fact that one side refused to agree to it and expressed that refusal violently. And that side was the Arab/Palestinian one. Whatever transpired subsequently, the Arab leadership bears the entire moral culpability for the initiation – and to a large extent the perpetuation – of the conflict through their persistent refusal to accept the two-state solution. That is not my opinion. That is an evidence-based statement that is fundamental to any fair-minded and clear analysis of the problem.

Isra-Prof

Why another blog on the world's most reported trouble spot?

Why am I writing this blog? Simple - there's a gap in the market.

I see screeds of blogs on the Middle East on an almost daily basis. Many of these contribute nothing or little to anyone's understanding of the region and its conflicts, or to Israel's position in particular. That's because so much of this material reflects one thing above all - the opinions of its writers.

Now there's nothing wrong with opinions per se - provided they are derived from and framed within a careful consideration of the factual evidence. Sadly, very few are. As an academic, that disturbs me. The world is a complicated and confusing place. Making sense of it requires clarity of thought. If we spout our views on any topic without reference to the evidence, what do we achieve? Zilch. A transient sense of "getting it off our chest" perhaps but that won't make much impact on anyone else or effect change in the medium or long term.

Here's fact number one - Israel is losing the PR war. The evidence for that statement is overwhelming and I'd be happy to review it for anyone who doubts it. Whatever strategies that advocates for Israel are using to try to change negative public perceptions of the country are not working. If your examination of the evidence has led you (like me) to adopt a position that is broadly supportive of Israel, that must worry you.

So I propose that all concerned about Israelis and/or Arabs should change tack. We need to de-emphasise our instincts, beliefs and emotions - in short, our opinions. Instead we need to reassert the evidence on which those opinions are based. The philosophical posture of this blog can be summed up in this statement (attributed to former President Obama and many others): "You are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts." We need to challenge those with whom we disagree to present their evidence. And we need, in turn, to offer evidence to validate our position.

An evidence-based approach is necessary to contextualise the debate, identify the real issues and help promote a peaceful resolution of the conflct. If you agree with those objectives, you should find this blog worth reading - whatever your attitude to Israel and her critics.