A "Jewish State": I Can't Define It, But You Have To Recognize It.

At one time, everyone knew that peace would break out all over the Middle East if the Palestinians would just recognize Israel. But then the PLO went and spoiled things by recognizing Israel, so there had to be a new excuse for not ending the Occupation. The new demand was that the Palestinians had to recognize Israel's "right to exist". And now, to ward off any danger that peace might raise its ugly head at Annapolis, here's a timely new one: the Palestinians have to recognize that Israel exists; that it has a right to exist; and that it has the right to exist as a "Jewish state".

The implications of Israel's demanding recognition as a state of the Jewish people rather than a state of all its citizens are complex, and I'm going to work on a separate post about that. But one really basic issue came to mind today when I read this Ha'aretz editorial on the subject. To sum up the article: Ha'aretz thinks it's absurd for the Israeli government to demand that the PLO recognize Israel as a "Jewish state", when it is the settlement policies of successive Israeli governments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that have been, and continue to be, the greatest danger to Israel's Jewishness. But what struck me most when I read the article wasn't the strength or otherwise of Ha'aretz's argument: it was the realisation that Israelis don't seem to have a common understanding of what they mean by a "Jewish state"; yet they insist the Palestinians must recognize nonetheless that Israel is one. More...