by LurkerBarak: Willing to vote for loyalty oath only if changes acceptedDefense Minister Barak has announced that if the cabinet does not adopt his proposed changes to the amended Citizenship Law on Sunday, he will vote against the new loyalty oath.
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Barak, unlike most of the other Labor MKs, has expressed support for the proposed oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic" state but has asked that the language of the oath be altered to include the phrase "in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence."
I have absolutely no problem with the additional phrase that Barak wants; to the contrary, I enthusiastically support it. Lieberman and the other supporters of the bill should put it in exactly as Barak demands. For one thing, I think they'd be foolish not to do so: If Barak is bluffing, then this is the perfect way to call him on it; and if he isn't bluffing, then Barak's support will provide a refutation of the claim that this is a "right-wing" law. But there is a more fundamental reason for supporting Barak's demand.
Regarding the "spirit of the Declaration of Independence", it is worth noting the following interesting points:
- The Israeli Declaration of Independence presents the books of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), together with the history of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael, as central elements underlying our right to live in the the land and to establish a state in it.
- The DoI declares that our establishment of the State of Israel was carried out on the basis of our trust in the "Rock of Israel" [צור ישראל].
- Contrary to widespread misperception, the DoI does not characterize Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state", but simply as a "Jewish state". The word "democratic" or "democracy" does not appear even once in the entire document. (Check for yourself if you don't believe me.) I once got into an argument with an opinionated leftist about this: When I asserted that the DoI doesn't even mention democracy, he said that I was being "ridiculous", since "everyone knows" that it does, and that I was spouting "right-wing historical revisionism". I responded by immediately bringing up a copy of the text on the web, and challenging him to show me a single occurrence of the word. After failing to do so, he slunk off muttering sheepishly.
(People whose knowlege of Israeli history extends beyond the blind repetion of currently popular ideas and buzzwords will have no problem understanding why "democracy" is not mentioned in the 1948 document: David Ben-Gurion and his Labor Zionist movement were primarily socialists, not democrats. Their core ideology centered around socialist aims such as redistribution of capital, and empowering the "workers" with control over the means of production. For Ben-Gurion and his cohorts, democracy was a distracting side issue at best, and a pesky impediment to their political aims at worst. Israel's modern love affair with what Israelis euphemistically call "democracy" did not come into existence until decades later, when socialist ideology in Israel was crumbling into oblivion.)
Lest anyone misunderstand me, I (as opposed to Ben-Gurion and his ilk) am most certainly an avid supporter of democracy --
true democracy, not the watered-down version practiced in Israel that is polluted with politically-correct leftist totalitarianism. And precisely
because Israeli democracy is so watered-down and polluted, I am very concerned about the insidious efforts by Israel's radical leftist media and Supreme Court to use "democracy" as a purported basis for eliminating the Jewish character of the State of Israel. And this is
exactly why I am so pleased by Ehud Barak's proposed amendment: By stipulating that immigrants should swear their loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state"
in the "spirit" of a document that describes Israel as a "Jewish state" only, without even mentioning "democracy", Barak's version of the law gives clear precedence to the state's Jewish character over its "democratic" one. (Probably not what Barak intended, but true nonetheless.)
So if Ehud Barak wants to stipulate that the oath of loyalty to the State of Israel should be "in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence", then I am definitely 100% in favor. That is the very spirit that I support and believe in.
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