The poll results were very interesting. 205 people answered the poll, and I belatedly found out that on SurveyMonkey the free account only allows you to views the data on the first 100. Regardless the first 100 answers were certainly enough to get a feel for what people knew.
Some answers were obvious and most people knew them or figured them out. Other questions were tricky or at least non-intuitive if you didn’t already know the answer.
Below are the correct answers and the explanation for each one.
1.
Who coined the term describing Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic State"?(a) Ben Gurion (b) The Israeli Declaration of Independence
(c) Peace Now (d) Rabbi Meir Kahane
Many people believe that this term is as old as the state, but that is not the case.
This phrase was coined and first used by (a) Peace Now
in after 1967 to explain why Israel must divest itself of significant and important historical sections of the Jewish homeland.
Peace Now forwarded the argument that if Israel is to remain a Jewish and democratic state, Israel must rid ourselves of the Arabs that threaten Jewish majority control of the state of Israel. Quite interesting, at the time, Peace Now espoused the same exact goal as Rabbi Meir Kahane, just through a different method.
2.
Was Israel founded as:(a) A Jewish and Democratic state (b) A state of all it’s citizens
(c) A Jewish state (d) The 51st state
The majority knew that Israel was founded exclusively as (c) a Jewish state, as explicitly declared in the Declaration of Independence and not a Jewish and Democratic state (they probably read our earlier posts and comments on that).
In the Declaration if Independence, Israeli is defined as a Jewish state that also offered equal political rights and personal freedoms for its non-Jewish residents. While clearly offers special interests and policies to Jewish nationals first.
Israel certainly wasn’t founded as a state of all its citizens as the term is used today.
In 1948 there were only 48 states in the union, so Israel would have been the 49th.
3.
Where is Israel legally defined as a "Jewish and Democratic state"?(a) Israeli Declaration of Independence (b) The Torah
(c) Israel’s Basic Laws (d) None of the above.
The answer is (c) Israel’s Basic Laws enacted on March 17, 1992.
Rights protected by Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty
• Section 1: The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish in a Basic Law tile values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Former Chief Justice considers the Basic Laws as a precursor to an Israeli constitution and gives them similar powers, even though, those that voted in the Basic Laws did not understand them as such at the time.
More than half the people thought the answer was (d) None of the above.
4.
Who is against defining Israel a Jewish and Democratic state?(a) PA President Mouhamad Abbas (b) Peace Now
(c) New Israel Fund (d) Israel’s Labor Party (e) All of the above
Nearly everyone correctly identified the right answer as (e) All of the above.
To one degree or another, all of the above want to change Israel’s Jewish character and definition and make Israel a state of all its citizens and not a Jewish state (see next question).
5.
Is Israel, as a state of all its citizens:(a) a Jewish state (b) a non-Jewish state
(c) a future Islamic state (d) The end of the Jewish state
The only (possibly) wrong answer is (a) a Jewish state.
By removing the Jewish from the Jewish state and defining it as a state of everyone, by definition you no longer have a Jewish state. (“
If everyone is special, then no one is special” – Dash)
You might have a state that temporarily retains a Jewish majority, but that is not sustainable if the state can’t unequivocally work to maintain the Jewish majority, in part through a selective immigration policy that favors Jewish nationals.
All the other answers are what would inevitably happen if Israel were no longer defined and run by the principles of it being a Jewish state.
Surprisingly, more than half the respondents believe that even if Israel were defined as a state of all its citizens, it would somehow inexplicably remain a Jewish state regardless – even though that would remove any vestige of Jewish national centrality from the government’s policies, laws, immigration policies and character.
I first thought they didn't understand what the term and consequences meant and assumed that because Jews would temporarily still be the majority and temporarily shape the character of the country, those that answered (a) simply weren’t thinking of what would be a few years into the future.
But I realized their answer must be far more subtle than that.
Presumably they meant that the Land of Israel, by definition, will always be the Jewish state, no matter if the Jews are in exile, the minority, or if the country is democratically overthrown and turned into a “state of all its citizens”.
Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People exclusively, and so even if no one calls Israel the Jewish state, and even if the Jews become a minority (or non-existent), and Jerusalem is ripped away from the control of the people of Israel and given to the Palestinians or to an International body to govern, the land of Israel can never lose its basic definition as the Jewish state.
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