Former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz did not just break his silence when he said he would work to change the nation-state law; he demonstrated a lack of national responsibility. Gantz has the right to join up with the political camp of his choosing; any candidate in the political arena can potentially bring honor to the Israeli democracy. But an attack on the nation-state law is not just dangerous populism; it is a process that could make Israel a country of all its nationalities.
It is a shame that this is how Gantz chose to break his political silence. If the nation-state law ends up dictating parties' election campaigns, it will not constitute a watershed moment, but rather the creation of a genuine fault line between those who are, in a sense, either for us or against us.
Naturally, the issue of national identity is a sensitive one. That cannot be ignored. The nation-state law does determine that the people who, for justified historical reasons, sought to establish a Jewish state and did so with their bare hands, have an exclusive right to national self-determination in the Land of Israel. The stability of the political mechanism and its ability for over 70 years to provide human and civil rights, stability and security far greater than what is offered by all other countries in the Middle East and Africa combined, anchors Israel's right to exist and defend itself as a Jewish state.
This is also true of the nation-state law when it is examined from the perspective of human rights. Anyone who has read the nation-state law knows it does not harm the individual rights of any citizen or minority community. It is merely one of 14 basic laws that complement one another.
National equality would mean either a binational state or a state of all its nationalities, which would result in the nation collapsing and sliding into diplomatic and societal chaos in the style of Syria, Iraq and Yemen. I am confident that this is not something our Druze brothers want.
It would be just as bad if Gantz's correction to the law were to promote a binational Jewish-Druze state. This would result in a demand to include the Arab minority in the nation-state law, and justifiably so, since excluding them would be racist and discriminatory.
It is not surprising that no government, whether on the Right or Left, has agreed to include explicit equality in the basic laws. There is that the Supreme Court could adopt its own interpretation of such a law and allow changes to the current status of Israel as a Jewish state. The legislature could enact something like a Basic Law: Civil Equality or an "allies" law that would anchor in law the rights of minorities who take part in building the land. But not at the expense of the only basic law that protects the Jewish identity of the state, and certainly not by weakening the Jewish people's right to exist as a nation in its one and only state. Otherwise, why did we bother returning to this place?
Any party leader that uses the nation-state law to garner votes or the approval of the media approval will be making a historically irresponsible mistake. Gantz would be wise to read the nation-state law and calculate a new path.
