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PDF FormatMoreover, while Mautner claims that he intended this proposal to relate only to “relations between the center and the periphery”—i.e., to judging the particularistic cultural practices of “non-liberal” groups—and not to “the struggle for the center,” it is hard to see how this limitation would work. If courts have the right to accept or reject a given practice on the grounds that it violates human rights, they will inevitably rule on the majority’s practices as well; to do otherwise would be gross discrimination. And majority practice is clearly crucial to determining the shape of the center. Some examples: Could Israel impose restrictions on immigration by Palestinians married to Israelis, either to prevent terror (the reason given in existing law, passed by a sizable majority) or, perhaps, to maintain its Jewish majority? Immigration surely affects the nature of the center, yet the Supreme Court was a single vote away from overturning the law in 2006 on the grounds that it violated “human rights.” Or what about banning homosexual marriage? The question of where society draws the line between the permitted and the forbidden is vital to defining a country’s “center.” But according to Mautner (as his book says explicitly), such a drawing of a line would not be possible: It would violate human rights.
With regard to democracy, Mautner is correct that I prefer the “minimalist” and “formalist” version of democracy to the “maximalist” one, meaning that I view democracy primarily as a set of procedures for how decisions are made rather than as a set of values that dictate the outcomes legislatures must reach on key issues. But far from ignoring the existence of Israel’s cultural minorities, this choice is necessitated, in my view, precisely because of Israel’s multicultural nature: In a society whose members disagree on so many basic issues, acceptable compromises are more likely to be reached through the give-and-take of the legislative process than they would be if many outcomes were predetermined by the Western liberal values that comprise “maximalist” democracy, and which, as Mautner himself acknowledges, significant groups within Israel do not share.
Moreover, while Mautner is right that any democracy must include some “substantive elements,” these elements are not, as he implies, self-evident and universally agreed upon; there is a raging battle among democratic theorists as to what they comprise. “Minimalist” democrats tend to limit them to political rights (freedom of expression, the right to vote and run for office, etc.) that are essential for democratic procedures to function properly; Mautner, like other “maximalist” democrats, has a far more sweeping view of what these rights comprise.
Either way, however, I fail to see how he can claim that I “ignore” the majority’s obligation “to show consideration for the minority and refrain from causing it harm” (an obligation “minimalist” democrats also acknowledge) by asserting the basic right of Israel’s Jewish majority to fashion Israel’s national space. After all, in this very same paragraph, Mautner claims that he, too, favors allowing Israel to continue to exist as a Jewish state. So is he, too, “ignoring” the Arab minority’s rights?
The answer, of course, is that we have different definitions of both which minority rights require protection and what a Jewish state means. I believe that what require protection are mainly the political rights that Israeli Arabs enjoy today, which are completely compatible with a Jewish state. He appears to have a much broader view, one that also requires full scope for Arab cultural self-realization—which, as noted above, is indeed incompatible with a Jewish state, except when said state is defined, as it is by Mautner, in such a way that very little is Jewish about it.
Mautner is correct that his book does mention the potential danger of Jewish-Arab conflict. However, I stand by my assertion that a comparison of the space he devotes to this issue and the space he devotes to the religious-secular divide makes it clear where his real concern lies. Nor do I accept his claim that in the specific section titled “On the Brink of Civil War,” he was justified in allotting far more space to religious-secular clashes than to Jewish-Arab clashes because rabbis had by then been calling for disobeying orders for twelve years, while the October 2000 riots were a one-time event.
First, Arab violence against the state has also been going on for years: There have been numerous cases in which, for instance, police have been stoned or otherwise attacked while trying to carry out demolition orders or arrests in Arab towns (and indeed, police now consider many Arab towns no-go zones). The October 2000 riots were merely the worst outbreak to date.
Second, just as rabbis have been urging disobedience for years, Arab leaders, including Knesset members, have been urging outright violence for years. To give just a few examples: MK Abdulmalik Dehamshe told the Or Commission in January 2002 that Israeli Arabs convicted of murdering Jews were “prisoners of conscience,” because murder, even of noncombatants, is “something so noble and so right” if committed to further the Palestinian cause. MK Hashem Mahameed told the same panel in November 2001 that throwing rocks at Jews is a legitimate form of democratic protest. MK Mohammed Barakeh gave a speech in November 2000 in which he urged Israeli Arabs to participate in Palestinian violence against Israel; MK Azmi Bishara subsequently told the Or Commission in December 2001 that Israeli Arab leaders would have shirked their duty had they urged Israeli Arabs not to attack Jews during the October 2000 riots.
And while I obviously accept Mautner’s reason for not including the Arab “vision documents” in his book, those, too, were merely the culmination of a long process of Arab attempts to undermine Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. In 2001, for instance, three Hadash MKs submitted a bill that defined Israel as a “democratic and multicultural state” rather than a Jewish and democratic one, causing two different Knesset legal advisers to bar it from the floor on the grounds that it denied Israel’s existence as “the state of the Jewish people.”
Finally, Mautner charges that I misread his motives in writing the book: He is not trying to impose “a court-enforced extreme liberal agenda under the innocuous guise of ‘multiculturalism’”; he is simply trying to propose workable solutions to Israel’s real problems. Clearly, I cannot see into Mautner’s heart, so I accept his word on this. But regardless of his intentions, the effect of his proposals, as I demonstrated in my article, would indeed be the imposition of a court-enforced extreme liberal agenda. Hence, if this is not his intent, I can only regret that he has formulated proposals so at odds with what he actually sought to achieve.
