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Religion, rights, and civil society - Indian and Israeli confessional politics - Israel and Judaism

Q: What did the declaration of Israel promise?

The country's declaration of independence promised 'freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture' to all inhabitants, and in large measure this has been realized.

8 important questions on Religion, rights, and civil society - Indian and Israeli confessional politics - Israel and Judaism

What gave many Israelis a sense of independence?

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, its admission to the UN one year later, and success in three wars against neighboring Arab states (1948-9, 1967, and 1973) gave to many Israelis a firm sense of no longer being dependent upon the benevolence of others.

What was at the core of Israel?

There was no official state religion in Israel, but obviously Judaism was at the core of national existence since the establishment of the modern polity.
Although Israel was a postwar creation, most Jewish Israelis thought of their small country in terms of the reestablishment of an ancient homeland that had been destroyed by the Romans some 2,000 years before.
In the long and sorrowful interregnum, diaspora Jews maintained a belief that their historic homeland would someday be restored.

What did the declaration of Israel promise?

The country's declaration of independence promised "freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture" to all inhabitants, and in large measure this has been realized.

How did Israel go about other religions?

By the year 2018, 75 percent of Israel's total population of 8.5 million citizens were Jews, while 21 percent were Muslim Arabs and another 4 percent were non-Arab Christians.
Despite this numerical imbalance, the Israeli government provided funding for non-Jewish religious groups, including support for Muslim and Christian schools.
Traditional Muslim and Christian days of rest were respected and issues concerning family law were relugated by the individual traditions.

What did Israel represent for many Arabs? What was the fundamental issue?

Still, for many Arabs in the Middle East, Israel represented an imperialist imposition, an attempt to frustrate legitimate Arab nationalism.
And while the language of the Arab-Israeli conflict often betrayed a strong religious divide, the fundamental issue remained land and sovereignty.

How did the Zionist founders see Israel?

On one level Judaism was essential to successful statehood; it enabled people from disparate geographical roots to bond together into modern nationhood under the banner of a common religious identity.
But most of Israel's Zionist founders were comfortable with the European secular tradition and committed themselves to the formation not of a Jewish state but rather a state for exiled Jews.
They were uncomfortable with the small ultra-orthodox community in their midst, largely because these citizens believed that the state should be based on sacred Jewish tradition, enforcing biblical prescriptions on the entire population.

What marked Netanyahu?

The long tenure of Conservative prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-9, 2009-) was marked by a steady drift towards the political right and policies advanced by the ultra-orthodox.
The government took a hard line on issues related to Palestinian Arabs as the protracted peace process ground to a halt.

What did the new law (2018) of Israel say? How did Arabs respond to that?

The new law defined Israel as first and foremost a Jewish state, affirmed settlement as a national value, prioritized Hebrew above Arabic as the state language, reiterated the claim that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, and made no mention of equality.
The measure infuriated many of the country's 1.8 million Arabs who had long claimed being treated as second-class citizens, and whose leaders insisted that the status of Jerusalem must be part of an overall Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

A Concise History of the World Since 1945 | 9781352010206 | W M Spellman

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