MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) welcomed the compromise agreement on the Jewish State Law Friday, in an interview with Arutz Sheva.
The compromise, proposed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, equates the democratic and Jewish qualities of the State instead of elevating the Jewish nature of Israel.
A portion of the draft reads: “The right to national self-determination shall be exercised in the State of Israel only by the Jewish people. Israel is a democratic state based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel. It upholds the personal rights of all citizens under the law.”
The wording of the bill seeks to deflect some of the criticism against the initial Jewish State Bill put forth by MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), which subordinates the democratic nature of the State to the Jewish values upon which it was built – making Hebrew the only official language and cementing the Jewish star and other emblematic Israeli symbols as symbols of the Jewish state.
Concerns have been raised that Netanyahu’s proposal will be radically different than Elkin’s, and that it would undermine the fundamental point of the law.
However, according to Shaked, “the new version is very similar to the wording of Yariv Levin’s and my own [opinions], who would say that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state; it is good wording.”
“And I think we can agree that between Tzipi Livni and us, the gaps are not big,” she added.
Shaked is convinced that the Jewish state law, in any incarnation, would aid bills against terrorism from being rejected in Knesset plenum votes – due to the fact that it would, directly or indirectly, emphasize the need for a Jewish majority to remain intact.
“There is no reason that a Jewish and democratic state would be liable only to the word ‘democratic,'” Shaked stated. “In this reality of judicial activism, we must anchor the issue of ‘Jewish state’ [into the public mindset].”
Several such laws have been vetoed or faced opposition over the past several years, including the recent “Life Without Parole” law, which nearly was stricken from the Knesset voting agenda after it was vetoed by Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Perry (Yesh Atid). Critics have argued the law holds no practical value.
“If they were to put, along with [the values of] human dignity and freedom, the fact that we are the nation state of the Jewish people, it would have been different,” Shaked theorized. “The feeling is that to this day the judges were looking at all sorts of [Knesset] hearings like a numbers game.”
“Even at the time when they tried to stop the unification of [Palestinian Arab] families for security reasons, the Supreme Court almost accepted the petitions against the decision and nearly disqualified it, which again proves that it is not enough [to] argue [in favor of] our security, but also to emphasize that we are the nation state of the Jewish people.”