Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights

by Yakobson; Alexander

• ISBN13: 9780415464413
• ISBN10: 0415464412
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Amnon Rubinstein and Alexander Yakobson explore the nature of Israel's identity as a Jewish state, how that is compatible with liberal democratic norms and is comparable with a number of European states.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The establishment of the Jewish state - The UN debates in 1947

Israel's Declaration of Independence

The UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) report

The Partition debate in the UN General Assembly

The dilemmas of the right of national self-determination

The historic right and the historic connection

"An alien body in the Arab Middle East"

The validity of the principle of partition

Two arguments: Zionist "colonialism" and the "invention" of the Jewish national identity

Colonialism and imperialist support

"The hope of two thousand years"? Modern Jewish identity and the question of historical continuity

Zionism and international norms

Everything goes back to Herzl

The question of Arabs' rights in the Zionist thought

The Jewish state and the Israeli democracy

"The Jewish state" in the Israeli discourse

The Jewish state and the rights of the Arab minority

The Arabs in Israel as a national minority

"The Jewish state", "the state of the Jews", "the state of the Jewish people"

"Either Jewish or democratic"?

"Jewish and democratic state" - oxymoron?

The Law of Return and the international norms of civic equality

The Jewish state and the state of all its citizens

"The Jewish-Israeli people" and the right of self-determination

Israel and the Jewish Diaspora - a national or an ethnic connection?

"The Israeli people" - a national identity common to all the citizens of the state?

The "post-national state"

"The neutrality of the state" and the democratic nation-state

The principle of neutrality and the various types of democratic regimes

Partition and "neutrality"

The principle of neutrality, the Law of Return and the problem of Palestinian refugees

Two examples of partition: India and Ireland

"Imperial nations" - Britain and Spain

"Composite" identities, national identity and citizenship

"Ethnic democracy", "ethnic nationalism", "civic nationalism"

"Ethnic democracy" - Prof. Sami Samocha's model

Civic nationalism and cultural homogeneity - the French model

Civic nationalism - US and other examples

"Second-rate democracy"? Epilogue: No other country

Excerpts from constitutions of contemporary democratic countries

Nansen's speech before League of Nations on the need to support the repatriation of ethnic Armenians to the Armenian Soviet Republic

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