1.
Brothers and sisters in Europe, some of you have published an appeal – another in an endless series of appeals – warning of the political, diplomatic, and moral ramifications of the newly formed government in Israel.
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You constantly repeat – with near-religious dogmatism – that "only the end of the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel will be able to ensure its survival as a democratic state with a Jewish majority."
At the foundation of the peace movement stood the premise that the conflict between us and the Arabs of the region was a conflict between two national movements. However, while Israel has recognized the Palestinian national movement, the Palestinians never recognized Zionism as a legitimate Jewish national movement with rights over the land, at least over part of it. From their perspective, we remain a European colonialist enterprise. Moreover, for them, the Jews are just a religion, not a nation, and thus are not entitled to a state of their own.
Article 20 of the Palestinian National Charter states: "Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own…" Note the denial of our historic ties to the land and the denial of our very existence as a people!
The statement that the only solution is a "two-state solution" has a second part that most speakers conveniently ignore: In full, it is "two states for two peoples." The idea is that each group should recognize the other as a nation and the legitimacy of each other's claims. The Palestinians never accepted this. Given the choice of territorial compromise or continuation of the conflict, they prefer the latter. Because compromise necessitates recognition that the Jews have some rights in their historic motherland. As we have seen, from the Palestinian perspective, the Jews do not have the right to self-determination. Incidentally, the IHRA definition of antisemitism which has been adopted by European countries, states that denial of the Jewish right to self-determination is in itself an expression of antisemitism.
We do not need the recognition of the Palestinians. There is a certain irony that a group that has not been here for long denies the identity of one of the most ancient peoples in the world, but this at least points to the honesty of their intentions.
2.
To a European audience, this may sound like a purely semantic debate. But it is not so for our neighbors. Some 15 years ago, around 17,000 documents concerning the years of negotiations with Israel and the Americans leaked from the office of Saeb Erekat, who was the chief Palestinian negotiator. Members of the Palestinian negotiating team recommended to Erekat that he avoid using the phrase "two states for two peoples" and replace it with "two states living in peace side by side". By the way, this is identical to the phraseology adopted in your document.
The logic, they explained to Erekat, in another letter that was part of the leak, was that "referencing the rights to self-determination of two peoples could have a negative effect on the rights of the refugees; in other words on the right of return – it insinuates that the refugees will be able to realize the right of return only within the framework of their rights to self-determination. The significance of this would be, in their words, that "the PLO no longer requests Palestinian self-determination in the territory of the state of Israel." In Palestinian discourse, the phrase "two-state solution" means an Arab nation, free of Jews, living alongside a state that for the moment is called Israel, but to which millions of "refugees" will return.
3.
Dear brothers and sisters, through your words, you are adopting the rhetoric of those who seek in any peace agreement to disband the State of Israel from its Jewish identity as the nation state of the Jewish people. In your foundational principles, you write: "[Donald] Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital gave wings to Benjamin Netanyahu's government: The prime minister had the Knesset pass a law on the Nation-State that, unlike the Independence Declaration, omits the Jewish State's commitment to democracy."
On the contrary! The logic upon which the Nation-State Law is based is the desire to maintain Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. You warn against the planned reforms of the judicial system and ignore the fact that in recent decades it is not the elected legislative but the Supreme Court that has turned Israel's Basic Laws from what are regular laws to supreme laws, part of a future constitution, and has used these laws to annul legislation passed by the Knesset without having been granted the authority to do so. Thus, they have undermined the balance between the branches of power and tipped it in favor of the judicial branch.
In this situation, the greatest danger is to the status of the Law of Return in which you wish to defend the "grandchild clause." The Law of Return is a deep expression of Israel being the state of the Jewish people in its entirety; in other words, your state as well. At the moment of truth if your lives in Europe change – as happened not so long ago – you will be able to find safe refuge here with us.
Israel in recent decades has seen the sanctification of the battle against the identity of the state as the nation state of the Jewish people. Among sections of the Western elite this very idea is being challenged and they call it racist. More than 50 countries in the world have a Muslim identity and over 100 have a Christian majority and Christian characteristics, but only the Jews don't deserve a state of their own. Thus, in Israel and around the world there have been growing calls to make Israel a "state of all its citizens." The naive among us continue to debate this phraseology. The truth is that Israel already grants equal rights to all its citizens regardless of religion, race, or gender. This phraseology is no more than a cover for a more radical idea, a "state of all its nations." In other words, the erasure of the Jewish identity of the State of Israel.
It is not an unimaginable scenario that the constitutional revolution of the Supreme Court could rely on the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty to annul the Law of Return. That was the justification for the legislation of the Nation-State Law. In order to encapsulate in a similar Basic Law the fundamental idea of Zionism: The State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. In other words, it is the political expression of the biblical vision of the return of the Jews to Zion.
4.
From this perspective, it is the Judaism of the State of Israel that will ensure the country remains democratic. The Declaration of Independence which you quote uses the word Jewish and its derivatives some 20 times and does not mention our democratic regime even once. There was no need for it to do so; that is the default mode of our people. Even in biblical times, the kings of Israel were civilian leaders and not absolute monarchs, as was the case with the monarchs of Europe. Even the problematic kings in the Bible had to bow before the ancient biblical laws and stand before the council of elders; in other words, the court, including the prophet who represented moral criticism of the king. Long before Montesquieu and his philosophy reached Europe, the separation of powers was a guiding principle for us. That is why we always rose up against foreign rulers that wished to annul our ancient laws.
Israeli democracy is not in danger, except perhaps in the imagination of those who have failed to digest the results of the election. Our democracy is strong and is far more established than in most of the European countries in which you live. By the way, 64 seats are not a "small majority" as you define it, because standing against the coalition is not one unified opposition, but various factions with polarized worldviews, some of which negate the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.
Instead of fearing for our democracy, perhaps you should be more concerned with the future of the continent where you take shelter. Not so ancient history teaches us that nothing lasts forever. We will be here for you.
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