Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which sought
to prevent mixing of Aryan blood, dubbed “race defilement.”
The new “nation-state law” may not mention “race defilement,”
but in Israel, anti-miscegenation laws are already in place, mas-
querading as legislation meant to protect traditional values. Mar-
riage can only be performed by religious officials, and the Ortho-
dox rabbinate has exclusive purview over Jewish marriages. In-
terreligious marriage within Israel is strictly forbidden by law.
The Reich Flag Law, which established black, red and white
as the national colors of Germany, and the swastika flag as the
new national flag, was also part of the Nuremberg Laws.
The second clause of Israel’s “nation-state law” regarding na-
tional symbols similarly indicates that “the flag of the state is
white, two blue stripes near the edges, and a blue Star of David
in the center.” Two days after it was passed, Israeli police and
military soldiers arrested a Palestinian boy for holding a Pales-
tinian flag outside the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.
The third clause of the new nation-state law reiterates Israel’s
illegitimate claim to the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, an ille-
gal and internationally unrecognized claim that has been em-
boldened by U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial deci-
sion to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Interestingly, however, this new law does not define state
borders, and Israel remains the only country in the world with-
out declared borders. This is not surprising, as Israel is a con-
tinuously expanding settler-colonial state, even though its ad-
mission to the United Nations in 1948 was based on its claim to
the areas within the 1948 armistice line only, which does not in-
clude Jerusalem or any other part of the West Bank.
This new law also marks the beginning of the erasure of Ara-
bic from the land, as it decrees Hebrew to be the only official
language of the state, while Arabic has “special status.” Its
fourth clause further explains that use of “the Arab language
[sic]” institutionally “will be regulated by law.”
As for the 4.5 million indigenous Palestinians in Gaza and the
West Bank who do not have Israeli citizenship, the nation-state
law alludes to their fate in the seventh clause, which states: “The
state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor
to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”
Simply stated, Israel will continue to work in earnest to build
Jewish-only colonies on seized Palestinian land, ostensibly where
a Palestinian state was to be formed per the Oslo accords.
We can expect that more settlement will simply accelerate
Israel’s ongoing displacement of Palestinians to replace them
with imported Jews. We know from the past decades of settle-
ment construction that this process is accomplished by system-
atic dispossession, marginalization, ghettoization and robbing
of indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. This process more
closely resembles the Manifest Destiny removal and marginal-
ization of First Nations in North America.
Western media should stop mincing words by calling the na-
tion-state law “controversial” when in fact it is encoding the
worst human impulses into law, the likes of which were pro-
moted in Nazi Germany, Jim Crow and Indian Removal Amer-
ica and other abominable moments in human history. A Law That Tells the Truth About Israel
By Gideon Levy
THE KNESSET legislated one of its most important laws ever,
and the one most in keeping with reality. The nation-state law
puts an end to Israel’s vague nationalism and presents Zionism
as it is. The law also put an end to the farce about Israel being
“Jewish and democratic,” a combination that never existed and
could never exist because of the inherent contradiction between
the two values that cannot be reconciled, except by deception.
If the state is Jewish, it cannot be democratic, because of
the lack of equality; if it’s democratic, it cannot be Jewish, be-
cause a democracy does not bestow privilege based on eth-
nicity. So now the Knesset has decided: Israel is Jewish. Israel
is declaring that it is the nation-state of the Jewish people, not
a state of its citizens, not a state of the two peoples that live
within it, and has therefore ceased to be an egalitarian democ-
racy, not just in practice but also in theory. That’s why this law
is so important. It is a truthful law.
The uproar over the bill was intended mainly as an effort to
continue the policy of national ambiguity. The president and
the attorney general, the ostensible guardians of decency,
protested and received compliments from the liberal camp.
The president shouted that the law would be “a weapon in the
hands of Israel’s enemies,” and the attorney general warned
about the “international ramifications.”
The prospect of Israel’s veil being removed before the world
prompted them to act. President Reuven Rivlin, it must be said,
cried out with great vigor and courage against the clause allow-
ing community-acceptance committees to screen residents and
its implications for the regime, but most liberals were simply
horrified to read the reality when it was worded as a law.
Mordechai Kremnitzer, in the July 10 Haaretz, also cried out
in vain when he said the bill would “foment a revolution, no less.
It will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state...”
He added that the bill would make Israel “a leader among na-
tionalist countries like Poland and Hungary,” as if it isn’t already
and hasn’t been for a long time. In Poland and Hungary there is
no tyranny over another people lacking rights, which has be-
come a permanent reality and an inseparable part of how this
state and its regime operate, with no end in sight.
All those years of hypocrisy were pleasant. It was nice to
say that apartheid was only in South Africa, because there
everything was rooted in racial laws, and we had no such
laws. To say that Hebron is not apartheid, the Jordan Valley is
not apartheid, and that the occupation really isn’t part of the
regime. To say that we were the only democracy in the region,
even with the occupation.
It was nice to claim that since Israeli Arabs can vote, we are
an egalitarian democracy. To point out that there’s an Arab party,
even if it’s excluded from any influence. To point out that Arabs10 WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2018Gideon Levy is a columnist for Haaretz. Copyright © Haaretz Daily
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