We Must Renew Our Commitment to Israel’s Defining Values
Tomer Persico
Translated by Levi Morrow
Credit: Kurt Hoffman
Tomer Persico is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. His book, In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea, was recently published by NYU Press.
Levi Morrow is a teacher, writer, and translator living in Jerusalem, where he is a PhD candidate in the Jewish philosophy department at the Hebrew University. He is a research fellow at both the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center and the Shalom Hartman Institute.
An earlier version of this essay appeared in Hebrew in Ofakim (Fall 2024).
The Civil War was the most lethal war the United States has ever known. Over seven hundred thousand soldiers were killed along with an unknown number of civilians. It tore apart the American people, destroyed families, stood friends on opposing sides of the battlefield, and left broad swaths of the federation in ruin. Yet the war also brought an end to the institution of slavery in North America, enabled the US to live up to its founding principles, and gave the entire American people “a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln famously described in his Gettysburg Address.
A new birth emerges out of crisis. The American Civil War provided a new birth of the American people, allowing the country to emerge from a state of national immaturity into its national adulthood—into its full and upright self. This rebirth was undertaken with intention and self-awareness; those leading the rebirth aimed not simply at the continued existence of the nation, but at a national life worth living—a life without slavery. The Hebrew language recognizes this truth as well: mashber, the Hebrew word for “crisis,” can also refer to a birthing chair, and even to the opening of the cervix itself.
Great nations may on occasion require just such a new birth, only after which can they become what they were meant to be. Former MK Rachel Azaria used to say that, just like the US did after the Civil War, Israel needs to go through the crisis of a new birth. I believe that time has come, as we have reached the limits of our original attempt to live up to our national values. There does not need to be a civil war—heaven forbid—but we must fight for our national ideals and commitments. We need to grapple with the reality we are facing and develop a plan of action. Israel’s present situation—a crushing war, no hope of any decision about the future, our unfit political leadership—practically dares us to sink into passive despair. But despair is not a plan of action. Hope is. We Israelis must clarify for ourselves what we face, and how we plan to act.
The Ongoing Sin
The American Civil War broke out over America’s denial of its foundational liberal values in its continuing enslavement of human beings. The crisis over slavery built up slowly, over the course of decades, until it erupted in the Civil War. It began with America’s Founding Fathers, who were already troubled that some of their countrymen—and sometimes they themselves—treated other human beings as property. As Thomas Jefferson, who himself owned slaves, wrote about slavery in 1786, “when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
In Israel, our own original and ongoing sin is failing to fully address the Palestinians' right to self-determination. This basic principle was part of the United Nations Declaration of November 29, 1947, which Israel embraced, recognizing a Jewish state in the land of Israel alongside a Palestinian (“Arab”) state. It was also part and parcel of the worldview of early Zionist leaders from across the political spectrum, including both David Ben-Gurion and Zev Jabotinsky.
Just as America’s Founding Fathers did not celebrate slavery, the founders of the State of Israel did not imagine the land to be “a land without a people,” or think that a state for the Jews would necessarily rule out the existence of a state for any other nation in the land. As early as a 1931 speech, Ben-Gurion argued that the right to self-determination applies to Palestinians exactly as it applies to Jews:
The world recognizes a right to self-determination. We have always, everywhere valued and fought for this right. We whole-heartedly support the right to self-determination for all nations, for every national entity, for any collective group. There can be no doubt: The Arab nation in the land of Israel has a right to self-determination. This right is not limited by or conditioned on how it affects us and our matters. We cannot deny freedom of self-determination from the Arabs simply because we worry that it will make our work more difficult. The ethical core of the Zionist idea is that belief that a nation—any nation—is its own end, and never the means to other nations’ ends. Just as we want the Jewish nation to be its own master, with the ability to determine its own fate independent of the will of other nations—even their goodwill!—we must see the same for the Arabs.
According to Ben Gurion, the Arab nation within the land of Israel has no less right to self-determination than the Jewish nation, and this right in no way depends on the predicament of the Jewish nation. Nearly 100 years ago, Ben Gurion clearly acknowledged the Arab residents of Israel’s right to self-determination. “The ethical core of the Zionist idea is that belief that a nation—any nation—is its own end, and never the means to other nations’ ends”: just as Zionism fights for the Jewish nation’s right to a state, so too must it recognize the Palestinian nation’s exact same right.
Jabotinsky, for his part, wrote in his famous 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall,”
My attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations—polite indifference. Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles. First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from the land of Israel. There will always be two nations in the land of Israel—which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Program, the program of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State. In drawing up that program, we had in mind not only the Jews, but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.
I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone. This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.
Jabotinsky affirmed the same ironclad principles as Ben Gurion: Each and every nation has the right to self-determination. He refers to the Helsingfors Program, a Zionist conference held in Helsinki in 1906, which discussed the rights and status of Jewish communities throughout the diaspora, and ultimately decided to request autonomy for these communities under the principle of “equal rights for all nations.” Jabotinsky maintained that these principles apply equally to the establishment and construction of both Jewish and Arab national homes. “There will always be two nations in the land of Israel”: Jabotinsky was committed to preserving the rights of the Arab nation living in the land.
Today, Israeli concern for Palestinian national rights is at an all-time low; we are all still in shock from Hamas’s barbaric attack on October 7. There are also serious and intrinsic reasons to deny the Palestinians’ demand for a sovereign state, a state which—barring intense levels of demilitarization—would constitute a terrifying threat to Israel’s security. Yet, as Ben-Gurion writes, “we cannot deny freedom of self-determination from the Arabs simply because we worry that it will make our work more difficult.” Ben-Gurion and the other founders understood that our own independence requires that all Palestinians be citizens—either in their own country or in ours. We have indeed naturalized Palestinians living within the Israeli borders after 1948, but those in the territories occupied since 1967 are not equal citizens. Thus Israel has failed to realize this principle.
The Institutions of Liberal Government
Israel’s rebirth will require fortifying the place of civil and human rights within Israel’s democracy. The State of Israel lacks many of the typical institutions of liberal governments, including a robust system of checks and balances. Israel has no constitution or a complete bill of rights. It has only one house of parliament, and the president lacks the right to veto a law. All Israel has to balance the executive and legislative branches of its government is its Supreme Court, and, unsurprisingly, anti-liberal forces have tried their best to neutralize it.
Israel lacks basic protections for its citizens’ rights and freedoms, calling its democratic commitments into question. “Where there are no guarantees for individual freedom, there is no democracy,” as Jabotinsky wrote in 1938. Important rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of protest, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to equality before the law are simply absent from Israeli law. The reality that citizens of Israel’s democracy have no legally-recognized right to freedom of religion or freedom from religion is incredibly problematic, and we can see its results with our own eyes—for example, in the discrimination practiced towards non-Orthodox Jews at the Kotel. Israel’s rebirth must include anchoring these and other rights in law.
Just as the United States reaffirmed its Declaration of Independence during the Civil War, insisting “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” so, too, we Israelis must return to our starting point, our Declaration of Independence, and reaffirm that the State of Israel:
will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
If we elevate the Israeli Declaration of Independence to the semi-constitutional status of a founding document, it can serve as a basis for judicial review. This will ensure its values define the State of Israel.
Our Declaration of Independence speaks of equality. So, too, does the book of Genesis: All human beings are created in the image of God, all are equal, and each person is a world unto themselves. There is no more fundamental Jewish and human truth than this. We must insist on anchoring the right to equality, which is simultaneously the most democratic and the most Jewish of rights, in law.
Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it must remain so. The Jewish nation, just like any other nation, has a historical and natural right to freedom and independence. However, the State of Israel must also recognize the equal rights of all its citizens. It cannot discriminate between different types of citizens. Only then can we truly repair our state and society.
Love Jewish Ideas?
Subscribe to the print edition of Sources today.
Two Types of Fundamentalism
The biggest obstacles to the rebirth of the State of Israel will be two groups of Jewish fundamentalists: the Haredi and the Hardal (Nationalist Ultra-Orthodox) communities and their factions. These groups explicitly reject principles of democracy and the liberal order—from the essential equality of all human beings, to gender equality, to rights discourse emphasizing individual autonomy. (They also echo the religious zealotry and messianism that caused so much Jewish suffering in the Second Temple period and in the days of Bar Kokhba, respectively.) Israel does not separate religion and state, and as discussed above, there is no recognized right to freedom of religion and conscience. As a consequence, representatives of these fundamentalist Judaisms have reached senior ministerial positions, and their movements receive funding directly from the state treasury on a massive scale.
There are, however, important differences between the Haredi and Hardal movements. Haredi fundamentalism is characterized by isolationism and strict adherence to Jewish law, focusing inward on community and continuity. A liberal, multicultural society tolerates minority communities and enables them to thrive, as the Haredim have in Israel. But because of their disproportionate political power in the Knesset, and due to the deference often shown to them by secular Jews, the Haredim have managed to establish autonomous control over numerous dimensions of their sociopolitical life, giving rise to a corrupt, nepotistic system which controls critical arenas like education, housing, and the media. For example, most Haredi children currently study in education systems run by the Haredi political parties Agudat Israel, Degel HaTorah, or Shas, that do not align with the standards of other Israeli schools. Furthermore, most Haredim do not serve in the military even though service is required of all other Jewish Israelis.
To make the Haredim full members of the larger society, Israel will have to dismantle their communal autonomy, and assert state authority over the educational and other norms of this community. More specifically, after our rebirth, the Haredi community will be able to maintain its way of life but only within the framework of Israeli law. Their school system will have to be properly state-run, with government oversight ensuring that a basic core curriculum is taught in every school. The issue of military service will also need to be resolved. To put it simply: for the State of Israel to be reborn, the Haredim will have to become actual citizens.
Hardal fundamentalism poses an even greater threat to Israel’s rebirth. First, it is a more diverse coalition of various groups including: Rabbi Zvi Tau’s “Yeshivot HaKav” group; Kahanists, who emphasize anti-Arab racism and hold an ambivalent attitude toward the state; Temple Mount activists, the most extreme members of which aspire to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and build a Third Temple; and the “Hilltop Youth,” the most extreme settlers living in the West Bank, who disregard Israeli law and the State of Israel itself, enacting ongoing violence against their Palestinian neighbors and even against IDF forces and the Israeli police.
In contrast with Haredi fundamentalism, Hardal fundamentalism is not satisfied with preserving its own community—it wants to shape the character of the state as a whole in the form of its anti-liberal, anti-democratic ideals. Its rabbis and political leaders say explicitly that they want to turn Israel into a “halakhic state,” a theocracy run according to Jewish law, and to expel, eradicate, or occupy, in perpetuity, the millions of Palestinians living between the river and the sea.
Preventing the messianic, theocratic dreams of the Hardal from becoming a reality is perhaps the most critical element of Israel’s rebirth. The most important question for Israel’s rehabilitation may thus be whether the power that Hardali groups have accumulated has made them too strong to fall, or whether they can still be reined in. They will likely seek to prevent the State of Israel from establishing basic rights and equalities in Israeli law. If we are afraid to confront and overrule them, we will never restore our democratic ideals.
Back to Mamlakhtiyut
The principle linking the Jewish people’s right to a state, the rights of the state’s citizens, the dismantling of Haredi autonomy, and the overcoming of Hardal fundamentalism is Zionist mamlakhtiyut. A term often rendered as “statism” or “public-mindedness,” mamlakhtiyut connotes putting the state and the greater good of all its people ahead of partisan concerns and personal interests.
Mamlakhtiyut parallels what other democracies call “republicanism.” Republicanism views the state as a shared enterprise, placing values like solidarity, responsibility, partnership, contributing to the common good, and sacrifice at its center. It emphasizes duties rather than rights, fortifies the rule of law, and upholds state mechanisms such as the professional administration of various governing institutions. Mamlakhtiyut is a network of norms, conventions, and values that serve as the foundation for the shared enterprise of the republic. Undermining these values undermines the state; insisting on them promotes its flourishing and prosperity.
Israeli mamlakhtiyut has been eroding over the last decade. In recent years, the ruling party has promoted populism, personality cults, and corruption in its stead. Under Likud control, government ministries have abandoned any semblance of proper governance and public service. Nepotism, distributing budgets based on political alliances, neutralizing and disarming gatekeepers and the institutions of the rule of law, attacking the press, and consistently avoiding responsibility for mistakes and disasters—this has all become the norm. Israel has departed from Western standards of governance and undergone a sort of “shtetl-ization”—a regression to a pre-modern, clannish, self-serving, and nepotistic society. The government’s attempt to finally crush the Supreme Court once and for all and to destroy Israel’s separation of powers in the 2023 Judicial Revolution was meant to be the final blow that would lead to the demise of Israeli mamlakhtiyut.
Against this trend, however, we have also witnessed an impressive and encouraging phenomenon: hundreds of thousands of citizens taking to the streets in protest against the government's attempt to legitimize corruption and politicization. Through continued, consistent, and determined protest—unprecedented in the modern world in its tenacity and in the percentage of the population who participated—these protesters managed to halt much of the government’s intentions. These individuals, many of whom typically do not join protests, displayed partnership, solidarity, responsibility, and sacrifice. In essence, they revived Israeli mamlakhtiyut from the bottom up. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis became citizens in the fullest sense of the word.
The development of this democratic, liberal, Zionist, and mamlakhti camp is perhaps Israel’s greatest cause for hope. The broader public has decided to take its future into its own hands and to take a stand against ongoing attempts to dismantle Israel’s state mechanisms. Citizens discovered that if they do not take to the streets and demand change, they would watch as the country they knew was destroyed—and we rose to the challenge. We discovered that we are much stronger and more committed than we had thought. To ensure Israel’s rebirth, we must continue the struggle and rebuild Israeli mamlakhtiyut.
A Constant Task
An intense struggle for the liberal order is taking place around the world. In Israel, we must remain faithful to the original promise we made at the establishment of the state and allow Palestinians to establish their own state. We must fight against religious fundamentalism both at home and abroad, and we must renew our mamlakhtiyut.
To this end, we will all need, quite simply, to be fully engaged in our citizenship. There are tremendous forces in Israel that seek to repair and rebuild, but we cannot let our attention wander or our vigilance lapse even on the day the current government is replaced. Without active civic involvement, states decline—just as we have seen in Israel.
We are beginning to understand more deeply that democracy is not a static condition but a constant task that requires us to continually and persistently build our republic together. We need to reestablish the State of Israel. As Benjamin Franklin was said to have responded to the woman who asked him, after the last day of the Constitutional Convention, whether they had established a republic or a monarchy: “A republic, if you can keep it.” There is no choice but to continue to preserve our country.
