"A Jewish and Democratic State." What does this mean to Israel?

Great Debates
61

This is a fascinating topic and there could be a dozen debate threads on just this issue.

I personally am skeptical that women’s rights plays a role, since societies which are still pretty traditional like Japan and Saudi Arabia have seen significant drops in fertility. And places like Sweden and Denmark have higher fertility than the more macho countries like Italy and Greece.

I am also skeptical of the retirement hypothesis, since poor people are not known for their ability to plan ahead.

My personal hypothesis is that wealth brings stimulation. For your typical resident of a wealthy country, there are a lot of stimulating activities which compete with reproduction for time, attention, and money. Things like dressing nice; watching television; going to movies; eating tasty foods; and so on. In the face of all these pleasant diversions, children seem like a pain in the (^*(.

Interestingly, ultra-religious communities with high fertility tend to be boring places. The women tend to dress plain rather than sexy; members are discouraged from using a lot of television or internet; and they go to religious services a lot. Religious services are really really boring.

Yes, I’ve been hearing for the last 30 years that the Arabs would eventually be a majority. I also remember similar predictions about Catholics and Mexicans.

I would be interested too, but here’s a simple graph which says quite a lot in my opinion:

For 50 years, the percentage of Jewish births in Israel steadily declined. Then, about 10 years ago, the trend reversed. Since then, the percentage of Jewish births has been steadily increasing.

In the long run, it’s the percentage of births which will dictate the demographics of Israel.

By “dominate” what do you mean? Already, IIRC the percentage of Jewish children in Israel which is Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox is surprisingly high. The same is true in New York.

62

It would be blatantly obvious in large groups of poor people over time that you need kids to take care of you, though.

Making babies is a popular past time at Shabbes; you can’t watch a ball game or soap operas. :slight_smile:

63

Seems to be more an issue of your perception of the term than of objective reality, though.

64

I see where Honesty is coming from, the idea of a nation defining itself as a certain religion or ethnicity is something I’d associate with illiberal, undemocratic states. Yet, it appears that the harm done to non-Jewish citizens is slim-to-none.

The declaration of type of government seems pretty common, though, in a nation’s constitution, analagous to Israel’s Basic Law:

So, where else is the declaration of government accompanied by a declaration of ethnicity? Egypt, as pointed out by brazil84.

The Constitution of Malaysia includes this, section 153:

Many other nations define nationality as a matter of blood, as well.

Fair enough; the situation you describe would hinge on what “citizenship” meant to Israel.

65

It’s usually done in the very name of the nation. As in, “Germany”, “Greece”, “Turkey”, etc. These are the nations of the “Germans”, “Greeks” and “Turks” respectively.

It is simply so common as to be unremarkable. No-one questions that “Turkey” is the nation formed by and for the “Turkish” people, who are ethnically “Turks”. If one studies the history of ethno-nationalism, it is very understandable - in the 19th and 20th century, many of these nations were part of expressly multi-ethnic nations or empires (for example what is not “Turkey” was just part of the “Ottoman Empire” that embraced many different nationalities) – or OTOH split up into numerous little principalities (like what is now “Germany” and “Italy”).

Ethnic nationalism was a new way of organizing peoples into nations, where the “nation” was identified as being the “homeland” for a “people” - respectively, the Germans, Italians, Turks, etc. In some cases this resulted in division (Turkey) and in others it resulted in addition (Germany, Italy). In all cases, there was a recognition, rightly or wrongly, that an ethnicity should have a “homeland”.

Naturally this caused all kinds of trouble and indeed, 20th century history is fueled by the problems created by conflicting ethno-nationalisms. Consider ethno-nationalism in the Balkans and the origins of WW1 - where the heir to a multi-ethnic empire (Austo-Hungary) was assasinated by a Serb nationalist.

America is an outlier in this (except for the anomalous position of the “First Nations”). Even Canada is, and remains, officially divided between English and French “peoples”, and French-Canadian people in Quebec certainly feel that Quebec is a “nation”. Indeed, Canada’s parliament passed a motion in 2006 recognizing that the Québécois form a “nation”:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2006/11/27/nation-vote.html

Unless Canada is an “illiberal, undemocratic state”, of course. I’d not like to be the one making that argument!

This is why the mere mention of the fact that Israel is a “Jewish” nation (by which is meant something like ‘officially the homeland of the Jewish people’) is hardly inexplicable, and is not outside the mainstream of history. Creating an exceptionalist explaination for it can only be the product of ignorance of history.

66

Sure. It’s the extent of the “for the Turks/Germans/Greeks/Jews”, and what that means in practice, that can make one uneasy. I am not saying it automatically leads to legal discrimination against those outside the baseline ethnicity, since clearly it doesn’t.

And now I can appreciate America all the more, for not adopting an ethno-nationalist creed, due to circumstances of history and geography.

Interesting, as France itself "does not recogniseminorities, whether they be ethnic, religious, linguistic or other. Under French law, all citizens have equal rights, and the law is not intended to accord specific rights to given ‘groups’ defined by their community of origin, culture, beliefs, language or ethnicity.”

This model is even more blind to ethnicity than the American way, which does allow the government to apply laws applicable to a “suspect classification” like race, subject to strict scrutiny.

This thread has answered my questions about Israel, and I now conclude that their practice of a national “definition” are not ideal, but are an acceptable, mainstream alternative to the American model.

67

The problem is that an official lack of official acceptance or recognition of minorities isn’t incompatible with official discrimination against minorities - as the “default” position tends to be set as that of the “unofficial” (but nonetheless very real) ethnic or religious majority.

France is a perfect example of this. The laws of France are, as you point out, very explicit - moreso than America - that ethnicity has no official standing. However, seemingly “ethnically neutral” legislation can have a very clear impact on targeted, disfavoured minority groups - such as Muslims.

In France, the obvious example of this is the legislation that bans the wearing of islamic scarves in schools. Note that the law doesn’t actually ban Islamic scarves, but any “visible sign of religious affiliation”. It just so happens that the only such “signs” regularly worn are islamic headscarves.

The problem is this: ostensibly ethnicly-neutral laws can have (and indeed be intended to have) differential impact. Usually, such an impact favours the enthnic and religious majority versus the minority.

68

Would that include kippas and Catholic Priest collars?

69

Agreed, though it could make such official discrimination more difficult to implement. France has a fair amount of religious and ethnic strife, though. I suppose it’s fair to say that just as enshrining a nation’s ethnic or religious character into law doesn’t axiomatically lead to discrimination against other ethnicities and religious, the lack of such enshrinement or recognition does not axiomatically lead to ethnic and religious peace and civility. Clearly, other factors are at work.

70

According to the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, “The law does not mention any particular symbol, and thus bans all Christian (veil, signs), Muslim (veil, signs), Jewish and other minor religions’ signs.”

71

Yup, well put.

72

Yup. If they are large, that is. Small stuff - like crosses worn as jewelry - would not count.

73

It does ban Kippas and large crosses, but not small ones.

However Jewish and Christian students had been wearing such symbols for decades and no one cared. People only suddenly decided that religious symbols had no place in French schools when Muslim girls started wearing Hijabs to school.

The only reason they’re even banning Kippas and large crosses is so they can pretend that their primary reason for this isn’t because of Muslims.

Unfortunately, France has a real problem with Islamophobia.

74

I can understand some folks feeling that way in the United States, but why France?

75

Talk to members of France’s Algerian minority.

Lots of people in many European countries have had a difficult times adjusting to changing demographics and France has had its share of problems.

So yeah, as someone who’s been to both countries I’d rather be a Muslim in the US than in France, though, to be fair it’s probably better to be an African-American or Latin American in France than the US(though perhaps not an African-African).

76

I suspect that access to affordable contraception is the primary driver. For the most part, people have babies because they like to have sex.

No argument. :wink:

Interesting graph, but it’s not clear whether the change is a long-lasting trend. No doubt it’s relative birth rates that matters most.

I meant “numerically dominate”, meaning, have a majority.

The percentage of children that are ultra-orthodox is about 8.7%, according to the paper I posted above. Apparently “orthodox” is hard to measure. Do you have a cite?

77

Names escape me, but there were many expatriate African Americans in France in the 1920s.

78

About time to light candles.
Shabbot shalom, everyone.
:slight_smile:

79

Well you need to think about what underlies the trend. To my mind, the obvious explanation is that there are religious Jews who have a lot of children and then raise those children to be religious Jews. This pattern seems likely to continue.

Here’s one for New York:

I was too lazy to look for a cite for Israel, but it seems likely to me that a similar pattern will hold there.