“Carmiel, a Jewish city, was designed to create a foundation for the Jewish settlement of Galilee. Opening a school for native Arabic speakers [as well as] money for bussing them at any time and place will change the demographic balance and harm the city’s character (which is 6 percent Arab),” said Yaniv Luzon, a magistrate’s court registrar in the Krayot outside Haifa, explaining why he was rejecting a November 2020 lawsuit filed by two Arab children living in Carmiel.
The two children had brazenly sought to have local government cover the cost of getting to their out-of-town school because there wasn’t one for Arabic speakers in Carmiel itself. Luzon based his decision on the nation-state law, whose Section 7 says “the state sees the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and advance its foundation.”
Three months later, Justice Ron Shapira, president of Haifa District Court, rejected the children’s appeal, albeit for administrative reasons. He ruled that Luzon’s citing the nation-state law as one reason for rejecting the suit was “fundamentally wrong,” and even hinted that the rationale behind the ruling was improper. That, it seemed, ended a case that almost gave the national-state law practical applications, instead of limiting its provisions to being declarative.
That is, until the arrival on the scene of the savior of the nation, Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Otzma Yehudit, who decided that the nation-state law wasn’t sufficient to establish a complete apartheid regime inside the Green Line.
A bill he is sponsoring states that “the values of Zionism will be the guiding and authoritative values in the design of public administration policy, domestic and foreign policy, legislation and the actions of the government and all its units and institutions.” He can be expected to later define exactly what those values are.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara opposes the wording of the bill on the grounds that it violates the principle of equality. It seems that she still believes in a Jewish state that tries to adorn itself with a few tassels of democracy. Perhaps if the government of Israel was not composed of gangs that wake up every morning with a new plan to rob the public purse or attack basic human values, and wrap their in the mantle of “Zionism,” the nation-state law would have remained as intended.
In other words, it would've continued to be a declaration grounded in fear and an unsettled identity, which is constantly in need of a scaffold to lean on. But in this government, no scenario is too outlandish to come true.
Baharav-Miara, together with all sensible citizens, even those content with a democracy starvation diet, fear that if Wasserlauf’s bill is approved, the government will not only be able to prevent them from living in Jewish communities but even to expel them, to prevent them from getting a mortgage to buy a home in a Jewish town, and deny them the right to things like education and health care.
All this will be made possible without resorting to constitutional twists and turns. It'll be enough to depend on the nation-state law to solve the “national problem.”
But even if Wasserlauf’s bill never becomes law, Israel will not remain silent. In another four years, Justice Shapira’s term as Haifa District Court president will end. This gatekeeper, and surely many other judges like him whose terms come to an end, will be replaced by “correct,” “loyal” and “Zionist” judges, created in the image and likeness of Justice Minister Yariv Levin.
Levin is the man who said five years ago, in an interview with Haaretz, that the nation-state law “is important because it tears the masks off the faces of the incumbent judges. Until now, they could hide behind the claim that they are adhering to the norms established by the existing Basic Laws. Now, their job has become more difficult.”
Judges, as Levin envisions it, will one day only be able to nod their heads, like toy dogs on the dashboard of a ramming car.
How Two Arab Children Exposed Israel's Fast-moving Apartheid
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01.06.2023
“Carmiel, a Jewish city, was designed to create a foundation for the Jewish settlement of Galilee. Opening a school for native Arabic speakers [as well as] money for bussing them at any time and place will change the demographic balance and harm the city’s character (which is 6 percent Arab),” said Yaniv Luzon, a magistrate’s court registrar in the Krayot outside Haifa, explaining why he was rejecting a November 2020 lawsuit filed by two Arab children living in Carmiel.
The two children had brazenly sought to have local government cover the cost of getting to their out-of-town school because there wasn’t one for Arabic speakers in Carmiel itself. Luzon based his decision on the nation-state law, whose Section 7 says “the state sees the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and advance its foundation.”
Three months later, Justice Ron Shapira, president of Haifa District Court, rejected the children’s appeal, albeit for administrative reasons. He ruled that Luzon’s citing........
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