Bernard Avishai shares his thoughts on the new citizenship oath for prospective citizens voted out of the Israeli cabinet. In practice, the whole thing applies to exceedingly few people since it’s for people trying to become Israeli citizens and very few of those people are not Jews. In symbolic terms though, as everyone realizes, it’s a very people deal. Check out what Bernie has to say. And I’d also share an observation of my own.
One of the ironies of this development is that the real heirs of hardline Revisionist Zionism (which most Americans associate with the Likud) were really against this. Not just Reuven Rivlin, the Likud Speaker of the Knesset, but guys like Dan Meridor and even Benny Begin (Menachem Begin’s son) who by almost every measure is the living heir of Revisionism. The real support for this move (and this was all about coalitional politics inside the Netanyahu government) came from two wildly disparate forces who actually seem to share a lot in common: Shas (the party of ultra-Orthodox Jews originally from the Arab world) and Yisrael Beiteinu (the rightist but deeply secular party of recent immigrants from Russia). It’s difficult to imagine two groups who share less in common.
Only they share one really key thing in common: their anti-liberalism. Whatever else you can say about these old line Likudniks and I could not disagree with them more about their flawed and dangerous refusal to embrace a two-state solution (paradoxically a number of them are now actually embracing the idea of a one-state solution — more about that later). But there was always a significant strain of liberalism — at least in the 19th century sense — to Revisionism. But the kind of rightism of a Lieberman/Shas alliance is another thing entirely.
I take some minor solace from the thought that this move itself does remain largely symbolic. But the advocates of this move make very clear they’re looking for more along these lines — and not symbolic moves at all.
