The following article portrays the gradual erosion of the Nation-state concept in Israeli Supreme Court rulings.
The article is from “The Israeli Nation-State: Political, constitutional and cultural challenges”, Edited by Fania Oz- Saltzberger and Yedidia Z. Stern (2014)
INTRODUCTION
The State of Israel is a Jewish nation-state. This was determined by the United Nations Partition Plan as well as by the Declaration of independence and by two Basic Laws dealing with human rights. The national identification of Israel is anchored also in a great deal of legislation as well as in practices common in many fields.
In this chapter, we shall describe the attitude of the Supreme Court over the past twenty years toward various components of national identity
rooted in Israeli law. We examine rulings on the right of return; review rulings on political participation; examine the rendering of the court over
the question of the status of the Hebrew language, and deal with its attitude toward allotting land for Jewish settlement and its approach to the
provision of economic incentives for such settlement; describe rulings concerning the institutions of the Jewish people; and, finally, examine
decisions regarding the naturalization of non-Jews. From the review, a judicial approach is depicted that erodes many of the components of
national identity that were customary in Israel before the intervention of the court. The purpose of this chapter is positivist and not normative, we
shall thus suffice with a description of the court’s activity on this issue without evaluating it.
