In a radio interview on Sunday, writer and poet Smadar Shir disparaged the nation-state law, but found it difficult to provide even a single example of how the law attacks the rights of the Druze community in Israel.
There was nothing unusual about this. Since the law passed, those who object to it haven't been able to explain how, exactly, it oppresses the civil rights of Israel's ethnic and religious minorities. Public discourse is brimming over with decrees about the law that range from "The Druze have been made second-class citizens" to "it's a racist, apartheid law." But we have yet to hear any just explanation or concrete example of that – other than clickbait telling us we "have to see" or "have to hear" someone or other weeping about the face of Israel "on this dark day."
Meanwhile, a few brave outliers are willing to admit that the problem lies not with the content of the law, but rather the very fact that it was passed at all or what it left out. This is where the arguments against the law end. The reason is simple: One cannot fully identify with the law's basic values while simultaneously screaming that passing it was a racist, discriminatory act.
"Why must the Jewishness of the state be anchored in a basic law?" people will shout, pretending not to understand. "We came here and built the Jewish state without it." The people who oppose the law have fallen into this rhetorical trap. They unwittingly admit that they recognize the Jews' privileges here, but object to codifying them in law, so as not to offend the victims or draw criticism from the world at large. So who is the racist?
We could have hoped that a recent petition decrying both the nation-state law and a recent amendment to Israel's surrogacy law would have solidified their objection. But the petition doesn't present anything new: It compiles all the slogans into a flowery declaration, topped off with the signatures of 180 poets, artists, writers, and academics. Is it any wonder that Shir, representing the signatories, couldn't explain why she had joined the fight against the laws?
This might be the goal: not to present arguments, so no one can poke holes in them. Go and try to argue with the tears of Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, or with the "deep shock and heartbreak" the signatories to the petition announce. It is more likely that it was a fashionable declaration that expresses the discourse within a specific sector and was designed to make them appear more numerous, as well as ensure that the educated, cultured circles – where the intelligent types are found, after all – won't notice the paradox and start voicing doubts about the direction in which the herd is heading.
Petitions from intellectuals, which are quite common in our parts, are expected and do nothing to enrich public discourse, spark dialogue, or kick off debate. They aren't even defiant anymore. They dictate how to think, an indication of the limits of the consciousness of a group characterized by specifically homogenous thinking.
But this time, for some reason, the authors of the petition chose to stress the moral basis of their position: "There are sins that have to do with the very essence of the existence of the Jewish people and their state. And they are the concern of intellectuals and how history will judge [us]," they write.
If this really is the reason why they – intellectuals – exist and why we should listen to them, where were they when UNESCO passed resolutions questioning the Jewish people's links to Jerusalem? Why did they remain silent when former U.S. President Barack Obama was negotiating with the Islamo-Nazi ayatollahs in Iran who threaten to wipe the Jewish state off the map? Why won't they protest our European friends, who are worming their way into the arms of Iran, the spiritual center of fans of anti-Semitic cartoons? When will they finally step up and express disgust at our "partner" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' repulsive statements about the Holocaust?
If they did, we might be convinced that the "very existence of the Jewish people in their homeland" was in contradiction to the nation-state law, which "contradicts the Declaration of Independence on which the state was founded," as they put it. In the meantime, we are beginning to suspect that they've never read the law, and have forgotten the Declaration of Independence. They are throwing its name, as well as their own weight, around for nothing.
