Rethinking Religious Establishment and Liberal Democracy: Lessons from Israel
Steven Mazie Wednesday, 1 September 2004
In the October 2003 issue of The New York Review of Books, Tony Judt declared the State of Israel an "anachronism." According to Judt, "the very idea of a Jewish state—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place." Judt's proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which effectively calls for the end of Israel as we know it, has its heart in a normative conception of the state that rejects any linkage between religion and constitution. Road map or no, Ariel Sharon or no, settlements or no, separation fence or no, Judt thinks Israel is illegitimate as a Jewish state because it is a Jewish state. Israel should abandon its illusory aspiration to be a "Jewish and democratic state" (as its basic legislation declares) and transform itself into a secular, democratic, bi-national state that embraces all the territory and all the people of historic Palestine.
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