Note: this article was originally supposed to be about abortion of all things, but in light of the past several days’ events I saw it necessary to speak on this subject instead. That article is still forthcoming.

Over the past several weeks or so, long-standing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have boiled over into what is now essentially a war, a fragile ceasefire as of this writing notwithstanding, with rockets fired from the Gaza Strip being met with airstrikes on Gaza from the Israeli military.

To give a quick synopsis as to what’s going on, in 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from what is now Israel, and today they and their millions of descendants reside outside of Israel, with a longstanding wish to return to their homes abandoned in decades past. Furthermore, in 1967 Israel captured several territories from its neighbors, including the Gaza Strip from Egypt and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. These territories were part of what was supposed to be a Palestinian state, though as the course of history would have it such a polity never materialized, and since that year those territories have been occupied by Israel.1 As such, there are currently millions of Palestinians in these territories, including the descendants of those exiled in 1948, that do not enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as their Israeli citizen neighbors. It must be emphasized that these populations are not the same as ethnic Palestinians citizens of Israel, who, barring one major possible exception, are de jure equal under the law as Israeli citizens.

The renewed fighting has brought to the fore accusations that the State of Israel is an apartheid state, not unlike the racial separation regime previously in existence in South Africa, or Jim Crow in the American South prior to the civil rights movement, mainly because of Israel’s claim to be an exclusively Jewish state, especially as codified in recent legislation. Defenders of Israel will retort that while some discrimination may exist, like it does in any society, Israeli law guarantees all Israeli citizens, Jewish or otherwise, equality under the law. Much of the controversy around the issue stems from the aforementioned territories Israel is occupying, where the inhabitants, with the exception of Israeli settlers, are not citizens and hence not entitled to the same rights and protections under the law, regardless of what their religion or ethnicity may be. A simple fix, then, is obviously just for Israel to grant citizenship to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, right? However, this is where things start to get hairy.

Zionism, the animating idea behind modern-day Israel, is often given several definitions, some contradictory and the polar-opposites of each other, most of them lofty and grandiose. That being said, a fairly neutral description of Zionism, in my estimation, can be support for the State of Israel retaining it’s Jewish-majority electorate, in line with its self-description as a “Jewish and democratic state”. Without resorting to anti-democratic means, Israel retains its Jewish-majority electorate primarily through its Law of Return (the aforementioned possible exception), which prioritizes Jewish immigration and subsequent naturalization to Israel, as well as pro-natalist policies that while not explicitly favoring the Jewish fertility rate over the non-Jewish one in effect do so.

On the other hand, the granting of Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the occupied territories would consequently force Israel to either provide equal suffrage to these populations, and hence lose its Jewish voting-majority, leaving open the possibility that one day anti-Jewish laws could be voted for and hence defeat one of Israel’s purposes as a safe haven for the Jewish people; OR Israel could restrict the rights of its non-Jewish citizens, in which case the description of Israel as an apartheid state would prove to be accurate, and a fatal PR disaster for the Jewish state would surely ensue. This is the dilemma that Zionists, at least democratic Zionists, are faced with.

Not So Different After All?

It should be noted that, as some commentators have pointed out, Israel is not unique in it being a state meant to serve the aims and interests of a particular ethnic, national, or religious group, unlike the United States for instance, which is, at least ostensibly, a country based on a set of propositions. The relatively exclusive nature of nation-states, they maintain, is not incompatible with the basics of democratic governance. Indeed, supporters of Zionism have a wide array of examples to bolster their case to choose from.

In its very first article, the Constitution of Ireland proclaims,

The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

Despite the acknowledgement that the Republic of Ireland is the state of the Irish people, few people would go on to opine that Ireland is engaging in apartheid or any sort of discrimination by defining itself as such. Similarly, Article 2 of the Constitution of Norway states that the country’s “values will remain our Christian and humanistic heritage”, clearly indicating that the Norwegian state places premium on a particular religion, but similarly, no such accusations of racism or discrimination are leveled against it. Likewise, the Constitution of Serbia declares that it is both

a state of Serbian people and all citizens who live in it, based on the rule of law and social justice, principles of civil democracy, human and minority rights and freedoms, and commitment to European principles and values.

Meanwhile, the Preamble to the Polish Constitution states in no uncertain terms,

We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic, Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources, Equal in rights and obligations towards the common good - Poland, Beholden to our ancestors for their labours, their struggle for independence achieved at great sacrifice, for our culture rooted in the Christian heritage of the Nation and in universal human values, […]

not exactly a subtle message to send. And lastly, and perhaps somewhat ironically, even the Constitution of Germany includes the following in its Preamble,

Conscious of their responsibility before God and man, Inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law.

Yet Article 3 of the same document also guarantees that

No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavoured because of disability.

So, it should go without saying that the existence of Israel as a nation-state, in this case for the Jewish people, is hardly an anomaly, even when just surveying Europe alone. That being said, to act as if the scrutiny directed toward Israel is indicative of some kind of anti-Jewish prejudice leaves out one significant variable that sets Israel’s status as a nation-state apart from the rest.

The Demographic Factor

Despite the focus on Israel’s ethno-religiously exclusive character, in a twist of irony, Israel is nevertheless also one of the most diverse nation-states in the world. Even when excluding the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel proper in 2018 included a full 25.4% of its population being non-Jewish, mostly Palestinian; in other words, more than a quarter of Israeli citizens2 do not belong to the country’s core national group. This finding is astonishing in comparison to other states with a similar commitment to a core identity group.

Armenia, like Israel, self-identifies as the nation-state of its respective people, yet unlike the latter, Armenia’s population consists of 98% ethnic Armenians. In Bangladesh, which fought a bloody war for independence based on its unique Bengali identity, just under 99% of the country’s residents consider themselves to be Bengali, quite a far-cry from Israel’s 74.6% Jewish population. The nation-state of Finland, while not directly collecting data on ethnicity, has more than 87% of its population reporting to speak Finnish, generally a pretty good proxy for ascertaining national identity in this context. The Republic of Ireland’s demographics tell a at this point familiar story, with 82% reporting as Irish and more than 90% as general Europeans.

What self-evidently makes the difference, then, in the Israeli case is the large minority of the population that in no way, shape, or form can be considered part of the officially sanctioned nation, even if on paper they have the same rights and responsibilities as any other citizen. This demographic competition, even in Israel proper alone, is logically going to cause tensions as well as accusations that by proclaiming itself the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Jewish people alone, the State of Israel is engaging in discrimination against its non-Jewish inhabitants. When the issue of the occupied territories and the Palestinian right of return is thrown in there, it makes such declarations appear even more incendiary.

Perhaps the closest analogue to Israel can be found in Spain which, while defining itself as a state for all Spaniards, clearly also privileges the regional Castilian identity over those of others in the country, despite only 74% of the country speaking the Castilian dialect of Spanish. This has in the past has led to violent conflict involving minority Spanish groups such as Catalans and Basques, and even today tensions occasionally tend to flare up, not at all unlike the situation in Israel/Palestine. Malaysia, a similarly diverse country with only 61% of the population belonging to the Malay ethnicity, which commits itself to both that and the Islamic religion, actually has policies in place that favors Malay Muslims and some other groups, known as Bumiputera, in education and employment positions. Malaysia has similarly been criticized for engaging in discriminatory treatment.

In Europe, which contains the poster children of nation-states, mechanisms like European citizenship via the European Union have provided some sense of inclusion to those populations who are not members of the national identity, and this is especially helpful in a country like Germany, where even though only an estimated 79% of the people are ethnically German, a large portion of the foreigners are from other parts of Europe and hence eligible to participate in the EU political process as Europeans. In fact, one of the points of contention behind the Brexit movement has been the effect that it will have on the legal status of European immigrants residing in or hoping to immigrate to the U.K., as the choice they are faced with now is to either apply for British citizenship and the assimilation that it entails, remain in Britain with the reduced ability to participate in the country’s civil society, or leave or not even enter the country altogether. As for non-European populations in European nation-states, though, they can feel the brunt of exclusion through legislation meant to preserve the national identity, perhaps as most recently illustrated by the otherwise liberal Denmark’s laws governing “non-Western” immigrants. Simply put, what makes Israel different is the presence of demographic competition that other nation-states either lack entirely or are satisfied by some other means. The preferential immigration, natalist policies, and denial of citizenship to an occupied and refugee populations are what is to be expected of a nation-state, and are highlighted in Israel’s case if only for the unusual circumstances it finds itself in.

The State of Israel, unlike the United States, is a nation-state whose central laws explicitly promote a particular nation over others, while guaranteeing all other citizens nominal equal participation in society. But unlike the nation-states of Europe and elsewhere, Israel has a significant proportion of its citizenry not belonging to the officially-sanctioned nation. Even if Israel were to remove itself from the occupied Palestinian territories entirely and prevent the full right of return of Palestinians to its borders, the large minority of Israeli citizens who, short of converting to Judaism, can never really be Israeli in the fullest sense of the term is going be a perennial challenge for the indefinite future.

Without providing a system by which all Israelis, Jew and gentile, can be fully included, I fear that this part of the world will be troubled with more violence in the years to come until a means of providing dignity to each and every Israeli, Palestinian, and other groups can be devised.

*Over the last nearly two weeks, the people of Gaza have suffered tremendously due to Israeli bombardment, especially its children. If you’re reading this, I strongly urge you to consider making a donation to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund to ensure that the youth of Gaza have the access to the healthcare and other provisions necessary to give them some semblance of recovery and normalcy: https://pcrf1.z2systems.com/np/clients/pcrf1/donation.jsp?campaign=1680