Today was the day of legislative approval. Numerous laws were passed in the Knesset today. Fundamentally, all of them were of good intention. However, good intentions are often not enough. As a saying goes, “Good intention is the father of evil deed”
Right-wing policies aim to enhance personal responsibility, freedom, self-determination, and a Jewish values-oriented policy and should not restrict free speech, free market and democracy.
- Approved in first reading: The term “West Bank” to be replaced with the term “Judea and Samaria” in all legislation
- Approved in final readings: Revocation of National Insurance benefits from persons convicted of serious terrorist offenses, treason or serious espionage
- Approved in final readings: National Authority for Eradication of Poverty to be established
- Approved in first reading: A Candidate can be disqualified from running in municipal elections if he or she denies the State of Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
- Approved in final readings: Bill for extensive rehabilitation of the Tkuma region
- Approved in first reading: National security strategy bill
That much of the passed and likely incoming laws.
The Problematic Law
The most problematic law is that if someone denies the existence of the democratic and Jewish character of the State of Israel, he or she is excluded from running as a candidate for elections.
Why? What if the state factually ceased to be a democratic and a Jewish state, as prominent critics of the current status quo of Israel say, like Prof. Moshe Cohen-Eliya or Gabi Taub?
The proposed law (first reading), one can hope, aims to prevent a party from attempting to establish such a state, i.e. a non-democratic, anti-Jewish state. Alternatively, the law wants to prohibit denying the right of the State of Israel to be democratic and Jewish.
However, it cannot be the case that criticism of the State of Israel, for example, as undemocratic, non-democratic, or non-Jewish, is no longer permissible. Here, some qualifications are needed.
Surely, the High Court will not object to this law, because it means whoever asserts that Israel is (no longer) a democratic and Jewish state is a de facto criminal. The rule of the deep state turned eternal.
You can’t even utter any criticism of the state. I think that is not the intention of the Knesset. The intention was to create the same legal basis as it is rightfully forbidden to deny the ‘Holocaust’ or the existence of the genocidal attack of 7/10. That means denying facts. Those laws have an empirical basis. But, what is the empirical basis of a democracy and of being a Jewish state? What is the solution? There is one.
The Dilemma and Its Solution
How do you get out of this intellectual trap? Well, you have to define the standard meter, so to speak, with a metaphor. If you say, to stay with the metaphor, that you have to maintain a minimum distance of 1 meter, then you have to first define what 1 meter is.
Translated, this means you have to define what a democratic, Jewish state is. That means, what is democratic and what is Jewish? In other words, this law requires a constitution, which Israel does not have.
So now it’s finally in the Knesset’s court to pave the way for a constitution, as promised to the Jewish people at the founding of the state of Israel. Because the Basic Laws were and are merely transitional laws towards a constitution. They did not define what 1 meter is. The empirical basis of a democratic and Jewish state is to have a Constitution.