A bill currently before the Knesset declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people is threatening to topple the ruling coalition. Although its critics have grandiosely attacked it as a chauvinistic attempt to undermine Israel’s democratic values, the bill was in fact the brainchild of a group of Israeli politicians and public figures from across the political spectrum. To understand the bill’s significance, according to Haviv Rettig Gur, one must first understand how it evolved:
In 2006 and early 2007, Israeli Arab civic groups produced three documents about the nature and identity of Israel. . . . The documents marked the first serious foray of Israeli Arab civil society into the question of Israel’s identity, and their shared conclusion was unequivocal: the Israeli state’s identification with Jewish nationhood must end. As the country’s “indigenous minority,” Israel’s Arabs deserved political autonomy, special protections, and a dismantling of the prevailing ethnic majority’s national self-determination. . . . The “Jewish nation-state” bill began squarely in the political center as a Zionist response to Arab civil society’s efforts to challenge the very principles the bill tries to cement in law.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-the-jewish-nation-state-kerfuffle-much-ado-over-very-little-substance/