The right to exist as a Jewish state

While it may be true that Arabs within the Jewish state suffer certain forms of discrimination, the reality is that the opportunities for Arabs in Israel far exceed those in most modern Arab states.

By FRED NAIDER FEBRUARY 4, 2025 02:09

THEN-US president Bill Clinton is flanked by then-prime minister Ehud Barak and then-PA head Yasser Arafat at their Camp David summit in 2000. The Second Intifada erupted in September just after final status negotiations were approaching a degree of fruition at Camp David in July, says the writer. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Peter Beinart, a noted liberal Jewish journalist recently argued in a New York Times opinion piece that the State of Israel does not, in its current form as a Jewish state, have an inherent right to exist. 

According to Beinart, only people have an inherent right to exist, and it is the obligation of a state to protect its populace. If it doesn’t, its right to exist is forfeited, and a new state with a more representative government should be formed in its place. 

Specifically, Beinart argues that the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza is not afforded the protections, rights, and pursuits to which citizens of a state would normally be entitled. 

He further claims that Arab citizens of Israel face severe discrimination. This combination of factors leads Beinart to conclude that the modern State of Israel cannot be both Jewish and democratic and that because it denies individual rights, it doesn’t necessarily have a right to exist in its current form.

Ironically, in the same op-ed, Beinart concedes that 20% of the physicians, 30% of the nurses, and 60% of the pharmacists in Israel are Arabs. 

To enter these professions requires access to the highest levels of Israel’s educational system, passing licensure exams, and employment in Israeli hospitals or medical institutions. Does this speak to State-sponsored discrimination against Israeli Arabs?

Arab Israelis protest in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp, in Umm al-Fahm, January 27, 2023. (credit: RONI OFER/FLASH90)

Arabs in Israel better off

While it may be true that minority populations within the Jewish state suffer certain forms of discrimination, the reality is that the opportunities for Arabs in Israel far exceed those for many minorities in most modern Arab states. 

Is Beinart arguing that none of these states have a right to exist? No, he is focused only against Israel.

Beinart quotes sources that suggest Israel is an apartheid state. These sources are of questionable objectivity. The citation of individual left-wing Israeli liberals and NGOs such as Amnesty International, which lumps the democratically elected leaders of Israel with autocratic Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, does not represent a balanced picture. 

Would the majority of Israeli academia agree that Israel is an apartheid state when the population of Arab students at the Hebrew University (14%), Tel Aviv University (16%), and the Technion (20%) closely mirrors the percentage of the Arab population in Israel? I think not.

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In terms of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Beinart ignores the fact that Israel ceded rule of Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 and the Oslo Accords gave the Palestinians administrative control over Area A, joint Palestinian-Israeli jurisdiction over Area B, and Israeli control over Area C. 

Most of the Arab population lives in Areas A and B. Final boundaries and demographic (the fate of Palestinian refugees) decisions were to be made through future negotiations.

Despite intensive diplomacy from 1993 forward and Israeli governments led by centrist/left-wing prime ministers such as Ehud Barak and later Ehud Olmert, agreements could not be reached. 

Instead, the Second Intifada was initiated in September of 2000 just after final status negotiations were approaching some degree of fruition at a Camp David summit in July 2000.

 Despite the Oslo Accords in 1993, during the term of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, the Palestinian leadership proved to be corrupt and vehemently antisemitic. 

Instead of working to form the infrastructure and legislative foundations of a future state, the population of Gaza was radicalized.

AFTER THE 2006 Palestinian elections, a brief civil war started wherein fratricidal battles Hamas killed hundreds of Fatah members. Since then, no elections have been held in either Gaza or the West Bank. 

Hamas has enforced a police-like state in which civil rights for Gazan Palestinians were eliminated. Is Israel the chief culprit for the daily hardships experienced by the Gazan people?

For a long time, basic commodities such as water, flour, heating, oil, electricity, etc., were unaffordable for many Gazans. Hamas, however, received billions of dollars during its hegemony in Gaza. 

These funds came from Qatar, the EU, Iran, and other supporting states and were allowed to flow into Gaza by Israel. Rather than being used to improve the living standard of Gaza’s people, the funds were diverted to stockpile weapons, including rockets, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and antitank weapons, and to build an intricate subterranean tunnel system from which to threaten and attack Israel.

To call Gaza an “open-air prison” and ascribe this status to Israel simply ignores the violent pathway pioneered by Hamas and its stated goal that “the Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” (Article 7, Hamas Covenant). 

This loathing of the Jews is what has led to the current situation in Gaza. 

A central teaching of Beinart’s op-ed is that a Jewish state, by its nature, cannot be democratic. There is some veracity to this view. 

A Jewish state must legislate certain rules that ensure its continuance. For example, a Jewish state will have to favor Jewish immigration and oppose immigration of other ethnic groups.

Thus, in all negotiations, Israel must prevent the return of so-called Palestinian refugees, who now are thought to number more than five million, to the State of Israel.

Such a return would dilute the Jewishness of the state and ultimately eliminate it as a refuge for world Jewry. In contrast, however, to Beinart’s contention that a Jewish state is not needed, the history of the Jewish people tells a different story. 

For nearly 3,000 years, Jews, first in the biblical Land of Israel and then in the Diaspora, have lived subjugated to the whims of various nations and autocracies.

Despite periods of relative prosperity and influence, every experience ended badly with pogroms, persecutions, expulsions, and ultimately the mass murder of the Jewish people. 

To argue that “global antisemitism notwithstanding, Diaspora Jews — who stake our safety on the principle of legal equality — are far safer than Jews in Israel” is disingenuous. The Jews living in Berlin in 1925 might have made the same argument. Thirteen years later, they were being sent to concentration camps.

Beinart is correct that Yeshayahu Leibowitz became disenchanted with the messianic Zionist view, which states that Jews had a God-given right to the Land of Israel. 

However, Beinart certainly knows that Leibowitz saw and argued for the need and right of Jews to have a sovereign state. This led him to the two-state solution based on the ethos that just as Jews cannot deny the existence of the Palestinians, the Palestinians cannot deny the existence of the Jews.

When American Jews and politicians argue for the right of a Jewish state to exist, they are simply echoing Leibowitz’s view. Given the present worldview of Palestinian leaders and their growing legion of supporters, a safe haven for the Jewish people is needed more than ever.

The writer is a distinguished emeritus professor of biochemistry and chemistry and former provost at the City University of New York. He lives in Rehovot. The opinions in this article are his own.