JWB, I agree with much of this. It is strange that this issue attracts so much of the world’s attention in light of troubles elsewhere. I think the status quo is probably okay and as a matter of practical politics the bill is probably needlessly provocative. But I think there is no good answer to the question I posed, unless one thinks that there should simply be no State of Israel or unless one thinks that the practicalities of the Arab world’s or the wider world’s reaction to the bill means that the bill is wrong in principle, which seems impossible to me.

I’m afraid I mistakenly deleted a sentence in the first paragraph. I meant to include a statement that Palestinian partisans will say this law belies the argument that all are equal in the eyes of the Israeli state.

Ted: I try not to express an opinion about things I am not informed about, so don’t take my comment as aspiring to anything more than speculation. That being said, a common refrain among Israel partisans (and really, that is the best way to describe supporters of both sides, given how much discourse over Israel/Palestine, if it can be called that, has deteriorated) has been that Israel is an inclusive democracy, and that even Arabs are given most or all of the rights that Jews enjoy. It follows, according to Palestinian partisans, that Israel is no different from Palestine, and deserves no more deference than, say, Saudi Arabia.

I reiterate, I have no truck in this debate; it puzzles me why it exerts such a pull given the magnitude of ethnic violence occurring in Burma or TAR. I am only offering a speculative defense of those who would criticize the law in light of your suggestion that these criticisms are motivated by double standards and/or antisemitism.

Well, I don’t think there was any question in 1948 that Israel was to be the Jewish state and Palestine (had the Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states accepted the partition plan) was to be an Arab state. Check out, for example, the text of the UN resolution, which makes this perfectly clear. So I’m not sure I understand your point.

I see your point, but I’m not sure it’s either antipathy towards the Israeli project in general or uneasiness about the way Palestinians react. Could it just be a reflection of the wider debate about what the United States and the West signed up for when it helped establish the Israeli state in 1948?

JWB, thanks for the comment. The reason the Arab states are relevant here, in my mind at least, is that the issue of Israel’s self-definition has gotten caught up in Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So anyone who in principle thinks it wrong for Israel to identify itself as a Jewish state should presumably say the same thing about Palestine (or any of the other Arab states), yet we don’t see that kind of criticism. Why? There seem to me to be two possible explanations. First, some critics may object to Israel as a state rather than just to Israel as a Jewish state and their criticism of the bill may just be a proxy for their more extreme views. Second, some critics (and I think this is true of many Israeli critics of the bill) may be mostly worried about the Arab reaction to passage of the bill. This is a rational concern, but it begs the question: why do the citizens of the Arab states have any grounds to complain about Israel’s self-definition in light of their own?

Antonio, thank you for the comment. I think that “Jewish” is a more complicated concept than you assume—it is a both a religion and a nationality. But in any event if you look at the constitutions of most of the states I’ve cited, you’ll see that in addition to defining themselves as Arab states they also define themselves as Islamic states in some sense (e.g., Palestine Amended Basic Law art. 4; Egypt Const. art. 2; Syria Const. art. 3; Jordan Const. art. 2; Saudi Arabia Const. art. 1; Kuwait Const. art. 2; UAE Const. art. 7; Yemen Const. art. 2-3; Oman Const. art. 1-2; Qatar Const. art. 1). Lebanon seems to be an exception. For these reasons, I think your point is incorrect.