Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm asks in the New York Times: “Did Israel Just Stop Trying to Be a Democracy”?
I generally do not comment much on Israel. My reasons are deep, tenebrous, far inside the vigorous flames of the circles of hell at the center of my philosophical system, sustaining the whole thing, just as the sun-like molten iron heart of Earth supports the heavenly biosphere… Just as the Dark Side supports the Enlightenment, as the Yin and Yang define each other…
But, as the New York Times itself decides to show some guts, so must I… I will not be outdone by commoners! (A very extended version of my published comment is below; it was approved by just 2 people, whereas comments in the Israel Uber Alles style, were approved by more than 100… Serious Jews are into introspection…)

Satrapies (subordinated plutocracies) were small in the West immense in the east. In any case, the Achaemenid (“Persian”) empire was extremely multiethnic… And extremely advanced: news came from all over the empire to Persepolis in one week with an efficient road network, and a pony express… (The real extent of the empire was even greater than that, going all the way to Ethiopia, and Oman was part of it…)
Dr, Boehm writes:”Last week, Israel’s government pushed through Parliament a new law calling Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” That statement may sound like a truism — and in some respects it is one — but the implications of it officially being made are monumental.
In 1948, the Declaration of Independence, the text that marks the founding of Israel, created a Jewish state that would ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Since then, the question of how Israel could be both Jewish and democratic has been the object of fierce controversy.
The effort to guarantee equal rights for non-Jews has at times seemed like trying to square a circle. Last week, Israel gave up on even trying.
… implicit nod to Palestinian self-determination was driven by an overriding concern for Jewish interests, not Arab rights. In May 1948, there were about 600,000 Jews and some 1.2 million Arabs living within Palestine’s borders. With Jews in the minority, the Jewishness of a democratic Israel could only be ensured if Palestinians had a chance at self-determination. In other words, Israel’s foundational twin pledge (to be both Jewish and democratic) was hypocritical…
The system’s original contradictions are now being laid bare. Of the more than 8.2 million people living in Israel’s recognized borders today, roughly 73 percent are Jewish and 22 percent are Arab. But of the 11.8 million people who live in Israel and the West Bank, roughly 56 percent are Jewish and 40 percent are Arab. And as the prospect of a viable two-state solution has receded, so has Israel’s promise that it would provide full equality to non-Jews.
In keeping with this evolution, last week’s nation-state law says that, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
***

This picture symbolizes the problem. The two mosques visible (gold Dome of the Rock, etc.) were built on TOP of the Jewish Temple. OK, it may be better than latrines. But when we read that Muhammad, after his death, flew to Jerusalem on a winged horse… a heady mix of Judaism and Hellenism (remember Pegasus?)… one finds itself confronted to a fable for little children having turned lethal, for real… The Star of David is nearly two millennia older than Islam….
The theory that ethnicity commands citizenship was made most famous by the Nazis. However tribalism above anything else is one of the oldest, most primitive, and deleterious, not to say savage, lethal and criminal, ideologies. All great empires triumphed, because they rejected it, wholesale. This is what made them great. For example, the Achaemenid empire, which extended from Greece to India and Ethiopia to Central Asia, was extremely multiethnic. The Greco-Roman empire was extremely multiethnic (and so is its descendant empire, “The West”). China and India were multiethnic.
Multiethnicity is not the end all, be all: it doesn’t prevent intellectual fascism, nor, of course, the political type of fascism, as the Persians obdurately demonstrated in the last three millennia…. However, it is conducive to it…
A multiethnic empire is forced to admit that there are higher principles than origins and appearances.
Those higher principles are well-known: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
These principles are secular, they don’t depend upon the common superstition that the tribe at hand was chosen by “god” to be tops! Or the elected people”, or even the definition of “man” (as happened in many tribes).
The “Elected People” theory backfired spectacularly in the confrontation between the Jews and their mental offspring. First in the Fourth Century, Roman emperor Theodosius I legislated that the Christians were the Elected People, and “heretics” (“those who made a choice”) were to be burned. Finally the “Elected People” theory, reinforced by the Christo-Darwinist mindset led to apply the “selection of the fittest” to Judaism: the Nazis insisted that they were the “Elected People”, elected by their own will, not a “god” scared of shrimps and hogs who insisted on sexual mutilations…
The irony, then, is that the Jewish god is of an inferior sort, scared of hogs and shrimps. Hence the Jewish god favors superstition heavily: doesn’t it favor its “elected people”? Actually it’s no favor to believe in all the stupidities in the Bible: it makes those who believe in them incredibly dumb. One may argue that they are made dumb on details. No. They are made dumb on the principle that dumbness has to be the ultimate ruler.
Thus, paradoxically, the Jewish god, who defines Israel, is its worse enemy. How did that occur? The vicious tribal fascism and exterminationism found in the Bible was a great help in the dog eat dog world which followed the simultaneous collapse of all the civilizations of the Middle Earth around 1117 BCE and, or, from the “conspiracy of the Sea People” (Pharaoh dixit)… Although versions of desiccated Egypt survived, and Greece would revive, mightier than ever, within three centuries.
The vicious exterminationism found in the Bible provided a justification for the methods Israel had to use, simply to exist. Before the Muslims crow:’We told you so!’, let me point out the original, literal version of Islam has exactly the same problem… And just as with Israel, that was the key to its early success. It’s no coincidence, but causation: in the grander scheme of thing, Islam is just a variant of Judaism, endowed with a similar ultra-violence (the Qur’an quotes approvingly Lot in the Bible on how to treat homosexuals:”with a rain of stones”; the Bible is the constant context of all of Islam, the “Messenger of god” Muhammad’s fundamental theme being that Jews and Christians didn’t abide correctly by the unvarnished Bible).
All this ultra-violence and ultra-discrimination? All the way to the ovens.
***
So why am I (nevertheless) pro-Israel? (But one should push my patience too far…) It’s not just a question of the enemy of my enemy being my friend. (Moreover, it’s not clear who is friend, who is enemy!) It’s not just a question of historical justice: Judaism is more than twice older than Islam. When the Islamists established mosques on top of THE temple of the Jews, they were symbolically put their feet on Israel’s face.
The Roman emperor Hadrian had kicked the Jews out of Jerusalem after the second Judaic War (135 CE). However, the decision, applauded by the fanatical Saint Augustine after 400 CE, didn’t have to be definitive: Roman emperor Julian had ordered the reconstruction of the Great Temple in 362 CE. Julian in the surviving Fragment of a Letter to a (Pagan) Priest: “I myself…intended to restore it [the Jerusalem Temple], in honor of the god whose name has been associated with it.” (Works, vol. 2., pp. 297–339.) Sixth-century historian Lydus quotes him, “I raise with the utmost zeal the Temple of the Highest God.”
Some may scoff:’Who cares about a Roman emperor?’ Well, our present regimes are descendants from Rome… As our law is, in its fundamental nature, Roman (extended to women and children). Moreover, morality (the mores) is entangled with law: what we consider legal is moral, and reciprocally.
In the best of possible world, the Middle East would free itself from the Biblical god: Arabic speaking peoples would harness the know-how of the Hebrew speaking people… But the complexity arises when one realizes that (some, many) Israelis, or, at least, Israeli companies, are so smart, precisely because their lives depend upon their smarts. The Dark Side, violence requires, enables and invigorates, higher mental functions. Such is the darkest of the dark.
Abominable are the flowers of infamy, yet beautifully mighty!
***
Conclusion? Tribalists are worse than fascists, or racists: they are followers of principles which reduce mental diversity, thus intelligence. Hence, in the end, tribalists are those whom much higher principles, which they are busy denying, subjugate. Israel may thrive right now by going solo in the world of decency and common sense. But solo is solo, and that’s dangerous, as all dead solo climbers, my friends, can testify.
Patrice Ayme
***
***
Note: The NYT decided the following comment was to be lauded (and it was approved by 100 times more readers than mine!). I reproduce it as it is, complete with its atrocious orthography (the New York Times has to live according to its picks:
pirranha299
PhiladelphiaJuly 26
Times Pick
Why is Israel, a country the relative size of a postage stamp, the Worlds one and only Jewish state always singled out for opprobrium no matter what it does. The Arabs have 28 plus countries. Is it too much to ask that they can have a law that makes it official that its a Jewish State? Can’t Jews have one little state of their own?
Israel is a Democracy..This law does not change that. It has a vibrant press, minority represention in its democratically elected legislature, and an independent judicial system that acts as check on the executive and legislative branches. As is typical, If Israel is not perfect the anti-Semites and Anti-zionists will take one element they disagree with and conglate it to portray all of Israel as “a Nazi state” and demonize it as a threat to World peace. Of course they say nothing when the true dictatorships demonize Israel, point out Israel’s flaws as existential threats to “their Palestinian brothers” while ignoring their own brethrens terrorism, racism, and militirism.
Israel as the only Jewish State will always be outvoted by the far more numerous Arab and Muslim States. The author cites ” Israel’s right wing government” in a pejorative sense. If it can be categorized that way it’s because the People democratically voted it in. If it fails it can be voted out. Thats democracy.
***
The answer to this sort of logic is that we have seen it before, with Sparta. There was only one Spartan state. Sparta enslaved another city-state: Messene, to its west, a unique case in Greece. It didn’t finish well for Sparta… Although Sparta was an independent state for more than a millenium (longer than Israel), it ultimately disappeared. Athens didn’t: in the middle Middle Ages, Paris was considered to be the “imperial translation” of Athens: many of the best principles of Athens were taken over by Paris, a rebirth of Athens. Sparta though was dead, and stayed dead… Except if Israel takes itself as the new Sparta? Well, Sparta didn’t have the equivalent of Orthodox Jews: they would have been put to death immediately…