The only door of entry to this collective is religious. There is no national door.
Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Russian immigrants have come to Israel under the Law of Return with their Jewish relatives. This law is very broad. In order to attract the Jews, it allows even distant non-Jewish relatives to come with them, including the spouse of the grandchild of a Jew. Many of these non-Jews want to be Jews in order to be considered full Israelis, but have tried in vain to be accepted. Under Israeli law, a Jew is a person "born to a Jewish mother or converted, who has not adopted another religion." This is a purely religious definition. Jewish religious law says that for this purpose, only the mother, not the father, counts.
It is extremely difficult to be converted in Israel. The rabbis demand that the convert fulfill all 613 commandments of the Jewish religion -- which only very few recognized Israelis do. But one cannot become an official member of the stipulated Jewish "nation" by any other door. One becomes a part of the American nation by accepting US citizenship. Nothing like that exists here.
We have an ongoing battle about this in Israel. Some of us want Israel to be an Israeli state, belonging to the Israeli people, indeed a "State of all its Citizens." Some want to impose on us the religious law supposedly fixed by God for all times on Mount Sinai some 3,200 years ago, and abolish all contrary laws of the democratically elected Knesset. Many don't want any change at all.
But how, in God's name (sorry), does this concern the Palestinians? Or the Icelanders, for that matter?
THE DEMAND that the Palestinians recognize Israel as "the Jewish State" or as "the Nation-State of the Jewish people" is preposterous.
As the British would put it, it's none of their bloody business. It would be tantamount to an intervention in the internal affairs of another country.
But a friend of mine has suggested a simple way out: the Knesset can simply resolve to change the name of the state into something like "The Jewish Republic of Israel," so that any peace agreement between Israel and the Arab State of Palestine will automatically include the demanded recognition.
This would also bring Israel into line with the state it most resembles: "The Islamic Republic of Pakistan," which came into being almost at the same time, after the partition of India, after a gruesome mutual massacre, after the creation of a huge refugee problem and with a perpetual border war in Kashmir. And the nuclear bomb, of course.
Many Israelis would be shocked by the comparison. What, us? Similar to a theocratic state? Are we getting closer to the Pakistani model and further from the American one?
What the hell, let's simply deny it!
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