Israel's population is about 20 percent Palestinian Arab. From Haaretz:
The Foreign Ministry said Monday that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was 'crucial' for reconciliation between the two sides after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Israeli calls to do so.
"Recognition of Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish people is an essential and necessary step in the historic reconciliation process between Israel and the Palestinians," the ministry said in a statement.
"The sooner the Palestinians internalize this basic and essential fact, peace between the two peoples will progress and come to fruition."
Abbas made his comments on the issue, which emerging as a main obstacle to peacemaking, in a speech earlier in the day.
"I do not accept it," the Western-backed Abbas said. "It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic – it is none of my business."
P.S. I know that some conservatives would accept the challenge of my headline: It's a Christian country. My family never did. My mama loved Madalyn Murray O'Hair for her nuttiness about the Pledge of Allegiance. And I bet a lot of young Americans wouldn't go along with that premise either.
The U.S. was not meant to be a Christian or Judeo-Christian country! This is one area where I agree with Professor Dershowitz.
LOL, first off read the U.S. Constitution it clearly states the U.S. is a secular government with a strict separation of church and state divide. As for Iran and Saudi Arabia, both are Islamic States correct? Even though they have minority groups of other ethnicities they are still Islamic States, Israel is a Jewish State, its in their constitution correct? Okay so for you to even try and compare Israel with U.S. religious policies is absurd and proves you have no knowledge of what you are talking about….
Idiot.
Israel doesn't have a constitution.
The "strict separation" is a judicial innovation. This is what the US Constitution actually says about religion:
From Article VI: "…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification
to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…"
That's it. You have to torture the Constitution pretty badly to get to our current idea that public institutions must be free of religious expression.
I have to agree with Abbas on this one. He's not an Israeli citizen and doesn't want to be. Why should he care about, and why should he commit himself to, any definition of Israel, whether as "the Jewish state" or anything else? It's not his problem.
Given its sycophantic support of Israel, why doesn't the US just convert to Judaism like the Khazars did?
US Christianity is Old Testament in character anyway, so Americans wouldn't notice much change.
And Abbas is quite correct in what he says: how Israel defines itself is of no consequence to outsiders. Just as it's none of our business when states define themselves as Islamic. What matters is what they DO. It's just another example of obstacles Israel dreams up so it can continue to incarcerate, oppress and murder the Palestinian Arabs, the rightful owners of historic Palestine.
And more rubbish about "two peoples". Jews are not a "people". The many different peoples of Israel belong to a religion.
Come to think of it, why don't Palestinians convert and claim the right to aliyah?
Israel doesn't have a parliament either, it has a knesset.
Israel's basic laws function as a constitution. Their supreme court tests law and application against the basic laws (which include a provision for color-blind equal due process under the law).
The reality is that in much of the USA, it *is* a Christian country. My HS senior daughter went to a town council meeting to get a permit approved for an Amnesty Int'l fundraiser. She reported that the meeting was opened by the recitation of the pledge, followed by a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Everyone in the room bowed their heads and joined in the "Amen."
We live in NJ for cyring out loud!
Many of Israel's practical laws define their applicability as to rights and duties in terms of whether or not one is entitled to
the law of return.
@ David F
Correct.
There are simply hoards of First Amendment cases particularizing, for example, whether or not a local police car
can sport a cross on its municipal insignia. Or if a creche can be displayed over Xmas holidays on municipal property–usually yes so long as a menorah or Star Of David is also displayed there, etc. I haven't looked at such cases in a long time, but I imagine now maybe a crescent has to be allowed too, at least during muslim holidays?
Israel does not have a constitution.
And Phil's point is that our country is unofficially Christian. By and large.
Way to play the semantics. Moron.
Jonathan Cook analyzes the failed attempts at a constitution in this article http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0195.htm .
December, 2008
'Spirit of inclusion': 'Jesus Christ himself would have gathered everyone around him'
The decision by a New York village to place the Islamic star and crescent alongside the community's official Christmas tree has a Catholic leader wondering if there are any wise men among the town's leaders.
Supervisors for Armonk, N.Y. voted to display a menorah and a star and crescent at tonight's Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the town's gazebo.
"We've decided to go in the direction of being all-inclusive," Supervisor Reese Berman told Associated Press.
The village had added the menorah previously. Last year, town resident Asad Jilani, saying the Christmas season is an appropriate time to celebrate all cultures, asked the board to include Islamic symbols as well.
"I said 'Oh, there's a menorah and a Christmas tree and where is my crescent?'" said Jilani.
Berman, who is Jewish, said the town did not have time to adequately address Jilani's request last year and, to not make Muslims feel they were being specifically excluded, the menorah was removed to a local synagogue.
Notice there is no cross, or Jesus creche, just a Xmas tree, a secular symbol like Santa Claus or Rudolph, the Red Nose.
This seems a likely trend regarding judicial interpretation of the Establishment Clause.
Note the use of the term culture, not in the First Amendment.
The Free Exercise clause interpretations have their own twists and turns. For example, does a noncustodial father
have a right to display a religious preference when his kid is over on visitation if custodial mother says no? That gets into what's in the best interest of the child. Good luck. A quick look shows usually the courts allow it, but one state supreme court ruled otherwise–I think in that case the two religions involved were Jehovah Witness versus Catholic…
Anyway their is often a very a confusing split in the federal court districts–the decisions usually turn on very precise sets of facts.
Wonder what would happen if Christians started asking for display of a cross during major muslim holidays or Jewish ones?
The United States was not founded as a Christian theocracy, but a person has to be pretty dishonest to claim that the underpinnings were not Western and Christian. Many of the founders of the colonies were explicitly Christian, and some colonial charters forbade Jews entrance into the colony. Founding a government that would not establish a state religion, or favor one sect of Christianity over another, is not the same as founding an atheist government that seeks to establish a borderless, multicultural, egalitarian utopia where evrey religion except for Christianity is welcome.
It would make more sense for Jews to take an honest look at what America was, and is, than it would for Americans to internalize Jewish customs, culture, Yiddish or the IP conflict.
@ Tuyzentfloot
Thank you for the Cook article–very informative and concisely done. It's very clear Israel intends to keep itself a democracy for Jews only, no matter at what cost. Recent events sharpen this trajectory.
@Witty
You should read the article. It shows that the supreme court and basic laws interacting together–have no teeth.
Well, think about it this way – Palestine is not making room for Jews. Most Arabs don't – so what more can we ask for, than be recognized by Palestinians, as a Jewish state. This means they forfeit their rights as "minorities" and take off to Palestine.
Shorter Garret–Israel is in the same category as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Before you call people "idiot", you might want to look up the definitions of words such as "sarcasm" and "irony". The point was that the US is a secular democracy and Americans generally take a dim view of countries whose systems elevate one religion or ethnicity over all others.
Jews were welcome in pretty much every Arab country up until 1948, and they are still welcome in many Arab states. What isn't welcome in Palestine is a Jew living there and then claiming the area for Israel.
Israel doesn't have a constitution, dumkopf.
Me too. Israel could called itself the Hebrew Holy Hub of Religious Hubris and why would anyone's ass have to be in the air acknowledging it? The Israeli leadership is whacked.
"Knesset" is the Hebrew word for assembly, which is the legislative branch of parliament. Israel has a parliament. They based it on Britain's system of government.
A constitution doesn't have anything to do with laws by definition. It is the underlying set of principles or rules or code by which a body agrees to be organized and governed. A constitution governs all branches of government. Laws are part of the judiciary and court system. An organization can have a constitution but no judiciary or court system.
Canada operated under the parliamentary system for 126 years until 1983. And it had a court system throughout that time.
Correction: Canada operated under the parliamentary system for 126 years until it got its constitution in 1983
Which colonies were those? The Sephardic Jews, who ran the slave trade from the Netherlands and initially out of the Caribbean built the first synagogue in North America in NYC in the mid-1600s. Every Jew in North America who can trace their family back 200 years in the USA are descendants of the, Although they moved the synagogue from downtown to uptown, it's still there, the oldest synagogue going. Washington ran his government out of Fraunces Tavern downtown until that French architect finished building the White House for him. Jews were very much a part of his world. Where Jews got a bad name was from the stock market in the late 1790s — when it started — because they wouldn't keep their word with non-Jews on trades without a contract, and the expected way on Wall Street was trade on a handshake. That's why WASPs carried that grudge against Jews for generations, and wouldn't let them into 'the club'. It had nothing to do with religion; it was the money, honey. Every old school WASP got this banged into his head from the age of five….and they were warned if they went to Wall Street: Dont do business with Jews, they'll screw you, you can't count on them. It was always financial. Very few people know this.
Touro was the extremely rich and powerful slave purveyor (family is famous in Louisiana), whose family came from Curacao where all original (meaning over 200 years) American Jewish families came from; they left Spain in 1492, went to Portugal for six months until that King kicked them out for the same Catholic reasons that Queen Isabella kicked out the Muslims and the Jews, and went to the Netherlands. The Dutch were doing slavery and gold out of Timbuktu with the African chiefs, and set up these businesses with the Jews who left for the New World in the early 1600s. From Curacao, they populated Montreal, New York, the colonies, the South, and Recife, Brazil.
Dont forget the majority of American history most know was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a novelist and a poet. And so much of it was bullshit.
"Dont forget the majority of American history most know was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a novelist and a poet. And so much of it was bullshit."
Posted by: MRW
If only Henry James hadn't stayed in Europe. We would know ourselves so much better.
"Dont forget the majority of American history most know was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a novelist and a poet. And so much of it was bullshit."
I'm not refering to Hawthorne or Longfellow. The trustees of the Georgia colony forbade Jews from entering the colony, and I believe that Virginia, Maryland and several other colonies had restrictions early on as well, and this was before the 1790s.