“Jewish and democratic”? The price of a national self-deception

“JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC”? THE

PRICE OF A NATIONAL

SELF-DECEPTION

NADIM N. ROUHANA

The current academic and legal campaign to constitutionalize Israelas a state that is both “Jewish and democratic” amounts to an actof national self-deception, rooted in the collective inability or unwill-ingness to accept that discriminatory policies toward the non-Jewishminority contradict democratic processes, on the part of that country’sJewish majority. The author addresses the recent efforts to create anIsraeli constitution by the consent of the Jewish majority that wouldlegitimatize the denial of equal citizenship rights for non-Jewish citi-zens. Because Israeli Jews have constructed opposition to the “Jewishand democratic” model as “extremism,” Palestinian citizens of Israelare forced to limit their resistance to passive rejection of the concept,refusing to acquiesce in their own subordination and denying morallegitimacy to the system that discriminates against them.

FOR MANY PALESTINIANS, and especially Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, the

Israeli campaign to build an ideological rationale to justify its self-definition as

a “Jewish and democratic” state is not merely a matter of subtle semantics. For

them, it is a political campaign that is both unjust and hypocritical—unjust

because it involves a system forcibly imposed upon them, the minority, by the

majority in order to perpetuate their inequality and subordination constitu-

tionally, and hypocritical because the majority insists that the inequality and

subordination are simply “another form” of democracy. For the Arab elites in

Israel, the campaign also evokes their political disappointment with generations

of “left-wing” Israeli intellectuals and legislators who refuse to acknowledge

either the fundamental contradiction between the “Jewish” and “democratic”

components of the state definition, or its function as justification for the exclu-

sion of an entire national group from equal citizenship. Moreover, even when

a contradiction is seen, the response has been recourse to verbal and psycho-

logical acrobatics attempting to reconcile the contradiction, rather than any

inclination to question the reality that brought it about. This reality will be chal-

lenged even less when Israel is constitutionalized as “Jewish and democratic.”

NADIM N. ROUHANA is the Henry Hart Rice Professor of Conflict Analysis at George MasonUniversity and the director of Mada al-Carmel—The Arab Center for Applied SocialResearch in Haifa. A longer version of this essay appeared in “Israel and the PalestinianMinority 2004: Mada’s Third Annual Political Monitoring Report” (Aug. 2005).

Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XXXV, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 64–74 ISSN: 0377-919X; electronic ISSN: 1533-8614.C© 2006 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissionto photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’sRights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

“JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC”? 65

A NATIONAL PROJECT OF SELF-DECEPTION

Before addressing the “Jewish and democratic” claim and its implications,

it is useful to summarize some of the facts that have led authors to maintain

that Israel, an ethnic (indeed in some ways a theocratic) state, is a democracy

for only one segment of its citizens, the Jewish citizens, and that even such a

limited application of democracy is fraught with problems.1 These facts—any

one of which would be sufficient to disqualify Israel from characterization as

“democratic”—include the following:

� A large number of Israeli laws, including basic laws having the status of

constitutional laws, unambiguously give preference to Jewish citizens

over non-Jewish citizens.

� Israel defines itself as the state (and homeland) of one extraterritorial

national/religious group, when in fact its citizens are composed of two

national groups. In this way, a sizeable minority of its citizens are

excluded from the definition of the state and homeland, while millions

of noncitizens are included.

� The democratic political platform of “a state for all its citizens”—which

would seem to be the most basic definition of a democratic state—is

deemed by Israel to be “political extremism.” Israel considers this

program to undermine the essence of the state because the single most

important criterion for inclusion within the state is not citizenship but

religious affiliation—i.e., being Jewish.

� The definition of “public good” in Israel is ethno-religious, including

Jews only.2 It excludes the Arab citizenry. A primary example is the fact

that lands expropriated from Arab citizens in the Galilee and elsewhere

for the “public good” are used to build Jewish-only settlements. Indeed,

the Arab citizens’ demographic growth, economic strength, land

ownership, and even educational and academic achievements are by

and large considered an existential threat to the “public” (read Jewish)

good.3

� The state extends political and social rights to noncitizens if they are

Jewish—any Jew anywhere in the world is given all the privileges and

preferential rights of an Israeli Jewish citizen upon immigrating to

Israel—while it deprives its own Palestinian citizens of equal rights.

Despite the above facts, Israelis have traditionally congratulated themselves

on being a resilient democracy in the face of myriad pressures emanating from

security needs; any shortcomings that may exist were seen as the unavoidable

result of these needs.4 But this self-satisfied complacency has been challenged

in the last two decades by, among other factors, the rising political activity and

assertiveness of new Palestinian elites, particularly their open embrace as of the

66 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

early 1990s of the political program calling on Israel to become a “state for all

its citizens,”5 and some new critical voices in Israeli academic discourse. Also,

the receding sense of national threat that accompanied the Oslo process made

it more difficult to justify discrimination solely on the basis of “security,” as had

been the case previously. As a result of these changes, it became impossible

for Israeli society to be unaware of the state’s discriminatory policies—legal,

institutional, and social—against the Palestinian citizens. Yet very few Israelis

(certainly no political party) acknowledged an actual contradiction between

the Jewish nature of the state and democracy, although many did agree that

there was some “tension.”

For the most part, the Israeli response to this growing awareness, as indi-

cated above, has not been to question the legitimacy or morality of their state’s

discriminatory policies or to challenge Israel’s claim of democracy. Rather, it

has taken the form of a multilayered, multidisciplinary effort to legitimize dis-

crimination and inequality by making them compatible with a “new model

of democracy.” Thus, over the past two decades, Israeli intellectual, judicial,

and political elites have endeavored to lay the theoretical and constitutional

grounds for acceptance of the idea that Israel can be, and is, both “Jewish

and democratic”—even if being Jewish entails openly discriminatory consti-

tutional, political, and social systems. These efforts on the various fronts, un-

dertaken spontaneously without prior coordination, amount to trying to force

the contradiction into a distorted democratic model in what I call a “national

self-deception.”

This essay will focus on the academic and constitutional arenas, where the

self-justifying theories are being developed and the constitutional framework

is being set to entrench and institutionalize the “Jewish and democratic” self-

definition. Such efforts, which have assumed the proportions of a national

project,6 are also being pursued on the judicial, political, and diplomatic fronts.

However, as these last are mainly about the practical implementation of policies

consistent with this ideological framework, they will not be dealt with here.

Overall, the assumption seems to be that if a body of sociopolitical theory

is developed to support this contradictory self-identification, and if the Israeli

constitution takes it as its ideological framework, then Israel will in fact becomeboth “Jewish and democratic” despite the realities on the ground.7

ACADEMIC AND LEGAL EFFORTS

Israeli academics have strained mightily to reconcile the irreconcilable con-

tradiction in a state that is institutionalized and constitutionalized both as

“Jewish” (whether Jewish is defined in ethnic, religious, or national terms)

and as democratic (when its population is multiethnic, multireligious, and bi-

national). The mechanisms for such reconciliation vary from complete denial

of any contradiction to arguments that Israel is a democracy despite the con-

tradiction, albeit a new kind of democracy.8 On the denial end of the spectrum

is Ruth Gavison, a leading constitutional scholar who holds a human rights


chair at the Hebrew University and is a candidate to the High Court of Israel.

She argues that nation-states, of which she considers Israel an example, cannot

give “full equality to citizens who are not members of the preferred nation.”9

In her view, a Jewish state can grant its Arab citizens equal citizenship accord-

ing to a “thin” definition of citizenship, but one that guarantees political and

civil rights. On the other end of the spectrum is Sammy Smooha, a leading

Israeli sociologist who has spent decades developing what he calls a “new

theoretical democratic model.” Israel, he argues, is neither a liberal democracy

nor a consociational democracy, but rather an “ethnic democracy.”10 Accord-

ing to this model, because the Arab citizens vote, are politically represented,

and receive many rights (however unequal), Israel is a democracy even though

there is a contradiction between its claim to being democratic and its self-

representation as the national homeland of only one group of citizens and its

legal discrimination against the minority group. Smooha originally presented

his model as a non-normative model of democracy, ostensibly without taking

a position on whether Israel should remain an “ethnic democracy” or seek

to transform itself into a “better form” of democracy—to use Smooha’s termi-

nology. Recently, however, he came out strongly in defense of Israel’s right to

maintain itself as an “ethnic democracy.”11 Many Israeli scholars, with some no-

table exceptions,12 have accepted Smooha’s “new kind of democracy” model

uncritically. Between the Gavison and Smooha poles of argument, many Israeli

academics have discussed “limitations” and “shortcomings” of Israeli democ-

racy while maintaining that they do not in any way detract from the essence

of Israeli democracy.13

In the constitutional realm, “constitutionalizing” Israel as a “Jewish and

democratic” state has been the project of many Israeli institutions for a num-

ber of years; the constitutional issue arises because Israel is one of the few

Finalizing a (“Jewishand democratic”)

constitution became apressing agenda only after

the Arab elites in Israeladvanced their “Israel as a

state of all its citizens”platform and in so doing

highlighted thecontradictions in Israel’s

claim for democracy.

self-proclaimed democratic states that do not have a con-

stitution, but only “Basic Laws.” Interestingly, finalizing a

(“Jewish and democratic”) constitution became a press-

ing agenda only after the Arab elites in Israel advanced

their “Israel as a state of all its citizens” platform and in

so doing highlighted the contradictions in Israel’s claim

for democracy. The energy devoted to this effort among

the Jewish elites directly correlates to Arab resistance

to the state’s Jewish identity, a resistance that mainly

took the form of a rise in consciousness and discourse

about the internal paradoxes of Israel as a Jewish state

claiming to be democratic. Arab academics and intel-

lectuals took the lead in exposing this paradox and in

advancing a democratic alternative. But while promotion of the “state for all

of its citizens” idea fueled questions about this paradox, it also energized the

counter-efforts to promote Israel as legitimately “Jewish and democratic.”

More recently—and especially since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada—the

“constitutionalizing” movement has accelerated and taken the form of a drive


to formulate a “constitution by consensus,” where Israel’s identity as “Jewish

and democratic” has a central place. The drive is now being led by the Knesset’s

Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee,14 and it is this body that will ulti-

mately be responsible for pushing the “constitution by consensus” through the

Knesset to make it law. However, the movement was originally spearheaded

by unofficial bodies, notably the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute

(IDI) and to a lesser extent the Tel Aviv–based Rabin Center. It was under the

auspices of the latter that one of the first public manifestations of the renewed

constitutionalizing drive was produced. The Kinneret Document, initiated in

the wake of the October 2000 demonstrations by Israel’s Arab citizens protest-

ing Israel’s actions in the al-Aqsa intifada, was drafted by Jewish scholars and

opinion makers, both secular and religious, from across the political spectrum.

The document articulated a vision for a “Jewish and democratic” state without

proposing any change in Israel’s current structure or identity; if anything, the

Jewish identity was emphasized to a greater degree while the Arab citizens’

Palestinian identity was completely absent. It is noteworthy that this “consen-

sual” document presenting a vision of Israel’s future was formulated without

the involvement of a single Arab citizen in its prolonged deliberations of more

than fifty participants or among its hundreds of signatories.

The term “constitution by consensus,” it should be made clear, in Israel

means “Jewish consensus,” since the Arab citizens, though comprising more

than 16 percent of the population, have been made absent from constitutional

debates early on. The IDI, which has lately played a leading role in the consti-

tutional movement, embodies this exclusion. Though sometimes it does invite

Arabs to its conferences and activities, they are essentially used to provide

cover for the effort to consolidate a Jewish consensus on Israel’s “Jewish and

democratic” claim.15 Needless to say, the absence of Arab participants extends

to the Israeli Knesset. Only one Arab Knesset member (out of seventeen) sits

on the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee. Arabs invited to participate

in discussions on a constitution find themselves facing the perpetual dilemma

of powerlessness: if they boycott the effort, they are accused of “missing an

opportunity” to influence the outcome, while if they participate, they con-

tribute to legitimizing a constitution forged by the ethnic majority and that will

inevitably proclaim Israel “Jewish and democratic.” In other words, without

having any chance of truly influencing the outcome, they would help legit-

imize a constitution centered on an exclusionary and degrading definition that

leaves them strangers in their own homeland.16

There is no doubt that the Knesset would approve a constitution empha-

sizing the “Jewish and democratic” definition. After all, with its overwhelming

Zionist majority, it has passed many laws in the last few years foregrounding the

definition. Among these are laws that disqualify any Knesset candidate or polit-

ical party that rejects the characterization of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic

state” (previously, the law stipulated only “a Jewish” or “a democratic” state, in

two different clauses). The laws also require a candidate to make a declaration

to this effect and pledge to refrain from acting contrary to this principle.17


THE SELF-SERVING NATIONAL DECEPTION

This highly effective, multileveled “Jewish and democratic” campaign has

succeeded in creating a wall-to-wall Jewish consensus that amounts to an almost

impenetrable hegemony within Jewish society. The effortless acquiescence in

the national self-deception by the Jewish majority seems to have been facilitated

by the benefits it procures.18

The most important benefit is that it allows the Jewish majority to retain the

extraordinary privileges conferred upon them by the institutions of the Jewish

state at the expense of the Palestinian citizens—indeed at the expense of allPalestinians—without having to face the moral and ethical issues that should

naturally arise. In other words, the “Jewish and democratic” self-deception

spares Israeli Jews from being burdened by the contradiction between their

society’s core exclusionary national identity—the Jewish state—and the demo-

cratic values cherished by many Israelis, particularly on the left. Thus, the

Jewish majority can continue to enjoy without pause markedly preferential

treatment in the distribution of land and water resources; planning and zoning;

economic investment strategies and business and tax advantages; citizenship

and immigration laws; preferential social, educational, and economic treat-

ment; control over the educational curricula; preference in governmental and

other positions; and the determination of national language, national holidays,

days of rest, and so forth.19 In a genuinely democratic state, privileges main-

tained so blatantly at the expense of another group would have to be renounced.

The self-deception that makes these privileges possible reflects the profound

conviction in Israeli Jewish society that the state and the homeland are theirs

alone and enables them to assure themselves of their benevolence toward the

Arab “strangers amongst us” as mandated by the nobleness of their democracy.

In this regard, the official Or Commission, appointed in 2001 to investigate the

killing by Israeli police of thirteen unarmed Arab citizens during protests the

previous October, quoted Israel’s first president as calling on the Jewish state

to treat the Arab citizens the same way the Bible taught the Jewish people to

treat the strangers living among them.20 Indeed, Jewish society often seems

to be congratulating itself, as if to say, “We, as masters of the homeland, are

called upon to grant these strangers living among us equality in some areas

both by the noblesse oblige of our democratic values and by our traditional

Jewish teachings.”21

Needless to say, Israel’s claim to be “Jewish and democratic,” even in its

own eyes, depends on the maintenance of a clear Jewish majority. It is this

respectable-sounding “majority rule” that helps Israelis claim that their state

is democratic even when it enacts such a broad range of discriminatory laws

and policies. The condemnation that would be attached to such policies in

other societies is mitigated by the fact that they are legislated and approved

by majority rule—“democratically.” But “majority rule” in a state divided along

ethno-national lines—in which the majority controls the national minority—is

in effect a “tyranny of the majority.” Every state institution—in all three branches


of government—is overwhelmingly and often exclusively Jewish and Zionist.

A Zionist majority is automatically guaranteed in all issues of consensual im-

portance to the majority. (This is why, in part, the Israeli state and society are

obsessed with the Arab minority’s population growth; paradoxically, if Israel

did not claim to be democratic, it could maintain its Jewish identity without

having to be as concerned about Arab demography.) Having a “democratic”

legal system not only gives it the right to maintain the state’s Zionist iden-

tity but also confers the legitimacy—in the majority’s eyes—to maintain this

identity by force if necessary. Thus the “democracy” of the state provides the

“legitimate” judicial tools to maintain Jewish supremacy, while the Jewishness

of the state provides the legitimacy to maintain Jewish privileges by whatever

means.

ISRAELI SELF-DECEPTION AND THE PALESTINIAN MINORITY

Adding the label “democratic” to an institutionalized ethnic or ethno-

religious Jewish state does not make Israel democratic.22 On the contrary,

flattering the Jewish majority’s self-perception of being democratic can ac-

tually perpetuate and deepen the undemocratic reality: if Israel is genuinely

democratic, as this wide-scale, multilateral effort so strenuously claims, then

what need is there for change in the country’s relations with its Arab citizens?

At most, there might be room for improving relations within the existing in-

stitutional and constitutional paradigms. The danger in this self-deception is

the implication that the current arrangement, being “democratic,” is moral and

right, and therefore that nothing much needs to be changed.

And if the Palestinian citizens reject the current arrangement, and deny

that it is even possible for Israel to be Jewish and democratic? According to

the consensual Jewish thinking on the matter, the Arab citizens are free to

think what they wish; they would simply be denying how fortunate they are

compared to other Palestinians or to all Arabs in the non-democratic Arab states.

Obviously, it would be preferable if the Arab citizens accepted the hegemonic

Zionist view and therefore legitimized it, but their rejection does not mean that

the state should listen, adapt, or in any way change in response.

Yet in the last analysis, whether or not Israel’s claim to be “democratic” has

any validity depends largely on its relations with its Arab minority. It is true that

democracy has much to do with rule by the majority, and it is true that Israeli

practices and policies are “voted” by majority. But democracy cannot be limited

to the procedural realm only. Furthermore in the case of two national groups

cohabiting in the same state, even procedural democracy cannot be reduced

to rule by the ethnic majority, because such rule provides the national group

having the numerical majority with the means to become a tyrannical majority.

In countries having a binational population, other arrangements, such as power

sharing and consociationalism, are needed to achieve democratic governance

and avoid the tyranny of ethnic majorities.23


As Hannah Arendt once argued, the will to resist that emanates from facing

injustice can be surpassed only by facing hypocrisy.24 Therefore the imposi-

tion (which the perpetrators call “democratic”) of the “Jewish and democratic”

concept against the will of such a sizeable minority will necessarily engender

resistance. Given the strength of the Israeli consensus on this matter, any re-

sistance, even passive resistance, will reinforce antidemocratic trends among

the Jewish majority at least in the short term. The discriminatory laws and

regulations enacted in the last few years already demonstrate this trend.25 For

most of the Arab citizens, the fact that these ideological efforts are backed by

such a solid Jewish consensus only demonstrates the depth of their crisis as a

controlled minority, underscoring their profound exclusion.

THE BURDEN OF THE UNDERPRIVILEGED

The dearth, not to say absence, of an effective Jewish challenge to the na-

tional self-deception and its implications for relations with the Arab citizens is

striking, but perhaps not surprising. It may be too much to ask the privileged,

even those on the left of the political spectrum, to challenge a system that sup-

ports their own privileges and dominance. Choosing to promote equality and

democracy would inevitably lead to painful contradictions,26 making it pru-

dent, no doubt, to sit on the fence and see if the minority will eventually acqui-

esce in the system and thus absolve the majority, including (perhaps especially)

its left-leaning segment, of the need to make the hard choices. Furthermore, the

absence of any questioning of Israeli democracy either in international media

and politics or in mainstream academic discourse—ironically at a time when

democracy issues have never been more prominent—further reduces Israeli

society’s incentive for introspection.

As for the Arab minority itself, in the face of growing anti-liberalism fu-

eled by the heightened Jewish ethnocentrism and a growing sense of (de-

mographic) threat, not to mention the government’s demonstrated willing-

ness to use brutal force against its Arab citizens, it presently appears to be

incapable of actively resisting the multipronged efforts to constitutionalize

Israel as “Jewish and democratic.” The current state of the Arab community’s

political organizations, social solidarity, and the will of its social and politi-

cal elites make aggressive rejection of the majority campaign, or pursuit of

an alternative course, unlikely—especially since an alternative course (the

“Israel as a state for all its citizens” platform) has already been presented and

evoked no significant Jewish support. Moreover, during the last few years any

form of resistance—civil demonstrations, democratic political programs, insis-

tence on equality, and even intellectual activity that defies ethnic dominance

and ethnic privileges—qualifies for the “extremism” label by the majority and

consequently is dismissed and delegitimized. Arab leaders spearheading such

resistance even risk being legally and “democratically” outlawed.27 Yet it is

the moral burden of the dominated and the underprivileged to resist a system

that seeks to perpetuate their inferior collective status. It is the burden of the


minority, and especially of its elites, to raise voices that question, challenge,

and resist the system.

Resistance, however, can take different forms in the face of the forceful and

uncritical support of the Jewish majority and its institutions and elites for such

efforts. Presently resistance is taking the form of passive rejection and with-

holding of approval. This resistance, even if minimal, is essential for two main

considerations: first, to protect the Arab minority’s dignity from the humiliation

of acquiescing in their own oppression, and second, to withhold moral legit-

imacy from the system that seeks to perpetuate discrimination against them.

As such, the Arabs keep open the question of the legitimacy of the ethno-

religious Jewish state and therefore do not foreclose the possibilities of future

democratic change.

To be effective, voices that reject the “Jewish and democratic” campaign

must be consistent and unwavering; they must be assertive in their demand

for the state’s transformation from an ethno-religious Jewish state (whether

it defines itself as democratic or not) to a genuinely, and therefore obviously,

de-Zionized, state (whether with a Jewish majority or not). Wavering voices

undermine not only the minority’s resistance but also the likelihood that the

majority may come to realize their own self-deception. Wavering therefore un-

dermines the cause of democratic transformation itself, providing a lifeline to

some forces on the “Zionist left” who seek to alleviate their pangs of guilt by

attempting to persuade the minority to fall into line behind the “Jewish and

democratic” definition of Israel (and sometimes hinting at dire consequences

for the Arab community if they do not). What is clear is that the Arab com-

munity’s current passive resistance to these efforts may contribute, at least in

the short term, to broadening and deepening the existing rupture in the rela-

tionship between Israel and its Palestinian citizens, but might in the long term

strengthen the chances for Israeli society to face its self-deception.

NOTES

1. Azmi Bishara, From the Jewish Stateto Sharon: A Study in the Contradictionsof Israeli Democracy [in Arabic](Ramallah: Muwatin, 2005); NadimRouhana, “Israel and Its Arab Citizens:Predicaments in the Relationship betweenEthnic States and EthnonationalMinorities,” Third World Quarterly 19,no. 2 (1998), pp. 277–96; Nadim Rouhanaand As‘ad Ghanem, “The Crisis ofMinorities in Ethnic States: The Case ofPalestinian Citizens in Israel,”International Journal of Middle EastStudies 30, no. 3 (1998), p. 321; NadimRouhana, Palestinian Citizens in anEthnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict(New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress, 1997); Sammy Smooha, “Ethnic

Democracy: Israel as an Archetype,” IsraelStudies 2, no. 2 (1997), p. 198; OrenYiftachel, “The Concept of EthnicDemocracy and Its Applicability to theCase of Israel,” Ethnic and Racial Studies15, no. 1 (1992), p. 125. BaruchKimmerling, “Religion, Nationality, andDemocracy in Israel” [in Hebrew],Zmanim 50–51 (Dec. 1994), pp. 116–31.

2. I am using the term“ethno-religious” because the “publicgood” includes not only the Israeli Jewsbut also Jews who do not considerthemselves as a national group (like theJews in the U.S., for example) andnon-Jews who, based on the closeness oftheir kin relationship to Jews, are entitled


to Israeli citizenship according to Israel’sLaw of Return.

3. This way of thinking has even beenembraced in an arena that should be themost liberal of all: Israeli universities.Ha’Aretz reported in November 2003 thatthe heads of Israeli universities decided toabandon an experimental admissionsprocedure when they realized that themain beneficiaries were not Jewishyoungsters from low-income developmenttowns, but rather Arabs. Relly Sa’ar,“Universities Return to Aptitude Exams toKeep Arabs Out,” Ha’Aretz, 27 November2003.

4. See Rouhana, Palestinian Citizensin an Ethnic Jewish State.

5. While the program of “state for allits citizens” has been discussed or broughtup by some academics and political groupsover the years, it was most compellinglyarticulated by Azmi Bishara, the leadingArab intellectual and the leader of theNational Democratic Assembly, an Arabparty which made this program central toits political discourse. See Azmi Bishara,The Ruptured Political Discourse andOther Studies [in Arabic] (Ramallah:Muwatin, 1998).

6. I have so far avoided using the word“project” to refer to the various effortsmentioned in this chapter in order to avertthe implication that these efforts weresimultaneously predesigned orprecoordinated. I use the term here torefer to the forcefulness of the variousefforts, particularly when they are bearingfruit at the same time, and also to implythat from now on these efforts can indeedbecome a project, in the sense that someinformal feedback and mutualreinforcement among the variousinstitutional efforts can naturally create theeffect of a national effort.

7. For a concise catalog of some ofthese realities in the last five years, seeMada’s three annual political monitoringreports: “Citizens without Citizenship”(July 2003); “Israel and the PalestinianMinority 2003: Mada’s Second AnnualPolitical Monitoring Report” (November2004); and “Israel and the PalestinianMinority 2004: Mada’s Third AnnualPolitical Monitoring Report” (August2005).

8. Ruth Gavison, “Jewish andDemocratic,” Adalah’s Review 2 (2000),p. 32; Ruth Gavison, “Jewish and

Democratic? A Rejoinder to the ‘EthnicDemocracy’ Debate,” Israel Studies 4, no.1 (1999), p. 44; Amnon Rubenstein andAlexander Jacobson, Israel and the Familyof Peoples [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: SchockenBooks, 2003).

9. Ruth Gavison, “Implications ofSeeing Israel as a Jewish (and Democratic)State” [in Hebrew], Discussion Paper no.383 (Center for the Study of Rationality,Hebrew University, Jerusalem), p. 18(emphasis added).

10. Smooha, “Ethnic Democracy”;Sammy Smooha, “The Model of EthnicDemocracy: Israel as a Jewish andDemocratic State,” Nations andNationalism 8, no. 4 (2002),p. 475.

11. See Smooha’s presentation at “TheMiddle East in 2005” conference organizedby UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studieson 20 May 2005. See Leslie Evans, “Futureof Iraq, Israel-Palestine Conflict, andCentral Asia Weighed at InternationalConference,” online at www.isop.ucla.edu.

12. See, for example, Oren Yiftachel,“‘Ethnocracy’: The Politics of JudaizingIsrael/Palestine,” Constellations 6 (1999),p. 364; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin,interviewed in Lily Galili, “A JewishDemographic State,” Ha’Aretz, 28 June2002; Gary Sussman, “The Challenge to theTwo-State Solution,” Middle East Report231 (Summer 2004); Ilan Pappe, “Powerand History in the Middle East,” Logos 3,no. 1 (2004).

13. See, for example, MenahemHofnung, Democracy, Law and NationalSecurity in Israel (Hampshire: AshgatePublishing, 1996); Avner Yaniv, ed.,National Security and Democracy inIsrael (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1993);Gabriel Sheffer, “Has Israel Really Been aGarrison Democracy? Sources of Change inIsrael’s Democracy,” Israel Affairs 3, no. 1(1996), pp. 13–38; Alon Pinkas, “TheImpact of the 1967 Occupation ofTerritories on Institutional Democracy inIsrael” in E. Kaufman, S. Abed, andR. Rothstein, eds., Democracy, Peace, andthe Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Boulder,CO: Lynn Reiner, 1993).

14. See Mada’s Web site page(www.mada-research.org) for someinformation on this official effort and inparticular on the debates organized byMada on the “Constitution and the ArabMinority.”


15. This charge about the IDI cannotbe made lightly. Obviously it requires someinvestigation into the IDI’s constitutionalactivities and the role it assigns to Arabparticipants. For such a preliminaryinvestigation, see Nadim N. Rouhana,“‘Constitution by Consensus’: By WhoseConsensus?” Adalah Newsletter7 (November 2004); Nadim N. Rouhana,“The Jewish Institute for EthnicDemocracy: A Response to the IsraelDemocracy Institute (IDI),” AdalahNewsletter 9 (January 2005).

16. See the “Letter Regarding theCurrent Constitution-making Process” senton 30 March 2005 to MK Michael Eitan,head of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law,and Justice Committee, by the author andNimer Sultany after they participated in ameeting of that committee, availableonline at www.mada-research.org.

17. See Nadim Rouhana and NimerSultany, “Redrawing the Boundaries ofCitizenship: Israel’s New Hegemony,” JPS129 (Autumn 2003), p. 5.

18. The international community’sunquestioning acceptance of Israel asJewish and democratic also helps theentrenchment of this self-deception.Reasons for this international attitudeaside, it leaves the burden of depicting theself-deception on those who pay its pricethe most—the Palestinian citizens ofIsrael.

19. See Nadim Rouhana and AreejSabagh-Khoury, “Force, Privilege, and theRange of Tolerance,” in Hanna Herzog andKinneret Lahad, eds., Knowledge andSilence: On Mechanisms of Denial andRepression in Israeli Society [in Hebrew],(Jerusalem: The Van Leer JerusalemInstitute, 2004). See also Albert Memmi’sdescription of the privileges of thecolonizer and his argument that all

colonizers enjoy the privileges, includingeven those who disagree with the system:Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and theColonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).

20. See State Commission of Inquiryinto the Clashes between Security Forcesand Israeli Citizens in October 2000, AReport, Vol. 1 [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem:Governmental Press, September 2003),p. 60.

21. Prime Minister Sharon answeredan Arab Knesset member who asked himabout citizenship as follows: “All the rightsover the Land of Israel are Jewish rights. Inthe Land of Israel, all the rights must begiven to the people who live here. That isthe difference between rights over theLand and rights in the Land” (The 333rdsitting of the Fifteenth Knesset, 22 July2002). This quote, which is most probablyaccepted by mainstream Israeli thought,reflects the same idea in a different way.

22. See note 2 for an explanation onthe use of the term “ethno-religious.”

23. See Arend Lijphart, Democracy inPlural Societies (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1977); for the applicationof this model to Israel, see Nadim N.Rouhana, “The Option of Binational State”in Sarah Ozacky-Lazar, As‘ad Ghanem, andIlan Pappe, eds., Seven Roads: TheoreticalOptions for the Status of Arabs in Israel[in Hebrew] (Givat Haviva Institute ofPeace Studies, 1999).

24. Hannah Arendt, On Violence(Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1970).

25. See note 7.26. See Memmi, The Colonizer and

the Colonized, in particular the chapter“The Colonizer Who Refuses.”

27. See Nimer Sultany, Citizenswithout Citizenship (Haifa: Madaal-Carmel, 2003), pp. 65–84. See inparticular the case of Azmi Bishara.

“Jewish and democratic”? The price of a national self-deception

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