Israel’s Left: Swearing Allegiance to Constitution Is ‘Fascist’

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
11 October '10

If there were an annual award for hypocrisy, the Israeli leftists now protesting a proposed amendment to the Citizenship Law would surely have this year’s title sewed up. The rhetoric has been utterly over the top: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called the amendment “anti-democratic”; author Sefi Rachlevsky termed it “fascist”; Prof. Gavriel Solomon even compared it to the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws.

Here are the actual facts. The amendment would require naturalized citizens, who are currently required to take an oath of allegiance only to the State of Israel, to instead swear allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.” That phrase first entered the law books in 1992, when two new Basic Laws on human rights defined the country as a “Jewish and democratic state.”

According to both Israel’s Supreme Court and to all the leftists now vigorously protesting the proposed amendment, the 1992 Basic Laws are part of Israel’s constitution: they supersede all ordinary legislation, and the Supreme Court has the right to overturn ordinary legislation that it deems in contravention of the Basic Laws. Indeed, the only people who challenge the Basic Laws’ constitutional status are conservatives, who argue that laws passed by less than a quarter of the Knesset do not meet the minimal procedural requirements for constitutional legislation.

But if you assume, as the entire left does, that these laws are part of Israel’s constitution, then the proposed amendment does nothing more than require naturalized citizens to swear allegiance to Israel’s constitution.

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