Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

THE DISTINCTION 3O5
public cemeteries, no public transportation on Saturdays and Jewish festivals,
not to mention the trampling of the land-ownership rights of the Arab citizens.
These expose a very un-liberal aspect of Israeli legislation and its everyday
culture. Moreover, the more than forty-year domination of a whole nation,
depriving it of all rights, in the territories occupied since 1967 has prevented
the consolidation and expansion of genuine liberalism within Israel's
jurisdiction. Nevertheless, despite the serious flaws in the area of individual
rights, basic liberties are maintained, as well as the main democratic principle
of periodic general elections, and the government is elected by all the citizens.
May Israel not, therefore, qualify as a classic democracy, ruling—albeit
belatedly—over a colonial region, as the European powers did in the past?
It should also be noted that the difficulty in characterizing Israel as a
democracy does not lie in the fact that the Sabbath and the Jewish festivals are
its main days of rest, nor even that the symbols of the state derive from Jewish
tradition. For that matter, the historical and emotional attachment between
Jewish Israeli society and Jewish communities in other countries does not
preclude a democratic regime in Israel. If in the United States various culturallinguistic
communities maintain close contacts with their lands of origin, if
Castilian is hegemonic in Spain, and if in secular France several of the holidays
stem from the Catholic tradition, there is no reason why the cultural-symbolic
setting in Israel cannot be Jewish. Of course, in a normative democracy where
there are cultural and linguistic minority groups, it is advisable to include
civil symbols and festivals shared by all the citizens. Not surprisingly, no such
attempt has been made in the Jewish state. The peculiar character of Israel's
supra-identiry, whose primeval code was inherent in Zionism from the start, is
what makes it doubtful that a "Jewish" state can also be democratic.
The Jewish nationalism that dominates Israeli society is not an open, inclusive
identity that invites others to become part of it, or to coexist with it on a
basis of equality and in symbiosis. On the contrary, it explicitly and culturally
segregates the majority from the minority, and repeatedly asserts that the state
belongs only to the majority; moreover, as noted earlier, it promises eternal
proprietary rights to an even greater human mass that does not choose to
live in it. In this way, it excludes the minority from active and harmonious
participation in the sovereignty and practices of democracy, and prevents that
minority from identifying with it politically.
When a democratic government looks at the electorate, it is supposed to
see in the first place nothing but citizens. It is elected by them, funded by them
and in principle is expected to serve them. The general welfare must include, if
only theoretically, all the citizens. Only in the second, or even third, place can