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Co-Author of Israel’s Nation-State Law Defends Legislation

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A contributing author of the nation-state law said last Thursday that Druze leaders who object to the controversial measure fail to understand the law and repeated that the bill does not discriminate against minorities.

Speaking a day after; about 100 Druze IDF, community leaders and current and former MKs joined a petition to ask the High Court of Justice to strike down all or part of the law, Adi Arbel, a co-director of the Civil Society Fund, and other supporters of the law defended the measure, saying it was necessary to preserving Israel’s Jewish character.

“The nation-state law does not discriminate any minority. The Druze leaders who decided to protest the bill in public were affected by propaganda, but there is no basis for their feelings,” said Arbel, who co-authored the nation-state legislation while serving as a project manager at the Institute for Zionist Strategies, a conservative think tank based in Jerusalem.

“I wasn’t surprised when I heard about their protest because there is a lot of disinformation going around and the Druze base their critics on what the media say and not on the bill in itself.

“The Nation state bill defines the state as ‘Jewish’ on a national level, not a religious one, which is much better for all minorities,” Arbel told TPS Thursday.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met last Thursday with Druze members of the coalition following the protest by Druze IDF officers and community leaders over the Nation State Law, but said there would be no changes made to the legislation.

According to reports, the government will put together a plan to address the Druze community’s needs and is also considering separate legislation cementing the status of the Druze community in Israel.

Akram Hasson, a Druze MK, with the Kulanu party, said that he had presented the needs of the community at the meeting – also attended by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, Treasury Minister Moshe Kahlon, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, Communications Minister Ayoub Kara, a Druze member of Likud, and Hamad Amar, a Druze MK for the Yisrael Beiteinu party – but would not retract a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Nation State Law until it had been changed to provide equality before the law for the community.

According to the petition, the Nation-State Law ignores the Druze minority and the Arab minority in general and violates the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.

The petitioners seek to nullify the law and to prevent its publication in the state’s Official Gazette, whereby it officially becomes law. They argue that the law violates fundamental rights such as the right to equality, and doesn’t give equal status to non-Jewish minorities.

The Nation-State Law stipulates that Israel is “the national home of the Jewish people” and that “the right to realize national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” The bill also enshrines the Israeli flag and the national anthem into law along with Jerusalem as the state’s eternal capital, as well as defining Hebrew as the country’s only official state language, relegating Arabic to a ‘special status.’

By: TPS Staff

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