In These Times: Secular Jews and the ‘Jewish State’

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Secular Jews and the ‘Jewish State’
By Ralph Seliger


American Jews remain, along with African Americans, the most left-leaning ethnic community in the country. While many support the State of Israel uncritically, some Jews express their concern for Israel’s welfare by joining organizations and activities that challenge certain policies and promote social change.

Last November, “The Other Israel Film Festival: Images of Arab Citizens of Israel” was inaugurated in a partnership with Manhattan’s Jewish Community Center and several other institutions.

In January 2008, Meretz USA, a progressive Zionist group that I work with, along with the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace (Brit Tzedek v’Shalom), focused their annual “Israel Symposium” on Israeli Arabs, who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population.

Another example of this trend of Jewish interest in Israel’s Arabs is the New Israel Fund (NIF), an American nonprofit that funds community organizing efforts and legal court challenges in areas such as environmental activism and the advancement of civil rights for Arab citizens of Israel, the physically disabled, women, gays and immigrant groups.

In the fall of 2007, the NIF brought Israeli speakers to a series of forums around the United States to examine Israel’s ethnic, cultural and economic diversity. This was discussed in the context of a “Jewish state” and how this concept resonates, if at all, with American Jews. Eliezer Yaari, the NIF’s executive director in Israel, stated a preference for describing Israel as a “state of Jews” rather than the more ideological construct of the “Jewish state.”

For their part, Israeli Arabs increasingly identify themselves as “Palestinian citizens of Israel.” Even as prominent an individual as Michael Mousa Karayanni, a professor of law and vice dean at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, speaking at the same NIF forum, indicated his sense of alienation as an Arab Israeli. Karayanni is one of the authors of a 2006 statement that demands Arab cultural autonomy, the elimination of the explicitly Jewish character of the national anthem and flag, and changing immigration policy to eliminate preferential treatment for Jews. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3578/secular_jews_and_the_jewish_state/