Israel Was Right To Define Itself As A Jewish State
Dear Editor,
I must, with respect, differ from my friend Alan Dowty, who argued against defining Israel as a Jewish State. While I strongly disagree with much of the recently Knesset-passed Nation-State Bill, especially its denigration of the role of the Arabic language in Israel and its claim that a united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel — a provision that makes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost impossible — its emphasis on Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is much more defensible.
The failure of the Palestinians to explicitly accept Jewish self-determination raises serious questions as to their willingness to have a long-term peace agreement with Israel. I have attended numerous academic conferences with Arab colleagues from around the Arab world, and I have had long discussions with the top Palestinian leadership, and I have found that despite 70 years of Israel’s existence, the Arabs still tend to see Jews as a religious group rather than as an ethnic-national group.
Adding to the problem is the fact that under Islam, Judaism has a clearly second-class status. Thus the unwillingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jews raises major questions as to whether they indeed recognize the legitimacy of Israel, thus making peace much more difficult to achieve.
Sincerely, Robert Freedman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO