Last July the Israeli parliament adopted a basic law defining Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people,” with more rights for Jews than other groups: including that Arabic was no longer an official language, that “Jewish settlement” was a national value, and that the right of “national self-determination” in Israel was “unique” to Jews. The law was denounced by Palestinians as an apartheid law, in which Palestinian citizens are absent. And liberal Zionists condemned the “shocking” law for making Palestinians “at best second class citizens.” Two days ago Sara Greenberg, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s adviser for diaspora Jews, sought to calm the waters by telling an audience of American Jews that the law is misunderstood by American Jews and that it actually reflects the strength of Israeli democracy — because worse clauses were removed from the bill. “There was a lot of different controversial clauses that came out through the debate and that ultimately were not in the bill, and I think from that perspective it was an example of the strength of Israeli democratic institutions. But perhaps in the end, a lot of people didn’t realize that those clauses were out,” Greenberg said at the […]
