More On Why “Jewish and Democratic” is a Paradox For Israel

I’ve talked about this before, but here’s Gershom Gorenberg rephrasing the question:

In “Jewish and democratic,” does “Jewish” limit the extent of democracy, or “democratic” place a clear boundary on the extent of “Jewish”? Without knowing the answers to those question, many Israeli Jews — including the Israeli writing this column — would be unable to affirm commitment to a “Jewish and democratic state”.

Many commentators of this blog likened Israel’s official jewishness to the official “Arabness” of many Middle Eastern and north African states. But that misses one big point: None of these officially Arab countries pretends to be a democracy, they are all “Arab republics”. This is why some commentators are proposing the renaming of Israel to “The Jewish republic of Israel”. At least that would be more honest.