Argument · heard from pro-Palestinian voices

“A religion doesn't justify having a country.”

Jews are a religion, like Christians or Muslims; religions don't get states; so a 'Jewish state' is illegitimate in principle.

Traps in play:◆ Which Zionism?◆ "What about you?"

1. Why people find it convincing

   • Modern liberal democracies separate religion and state; a state defined by a faith looks like a step backwards.
   • In Israel, marriage and divorce for Jews are controlled by the Orthodox rabbinate — there is no civil marriage — so religion does shape citizens' lives there.
   • Religious-nationalist parties are part of Israeli governments and push religious law into public life.
   • For Palestinians, being ruled or displaced in the name of another people's religion feels like religious domination.

2. What's true

   Religion shapes Israeli law more than in most democracies, and that is fair to criticise.

   Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel fall under rabbinical courts (Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, 1953), so there is no civil marriage inside the country; religious parties have long held leverage in coalitions; the religious settler movement ties its politics to scripture. Secular Israelis criticise all of this constantly — it is a live domestic fight, not a fringe complaint.

   law / courtRabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, 5713-1953 (Israel) (1953)

3. What's left out

   Jews are a people, not only a faith — and Zionism was mostly secular.

   A secular or atheist Jew is still a Jew; converts join a people ('your people shall be my people', Ruth 1:16), not only a creed. Political Zionism's founders were largely secular, and many Orthodox authorities opposed it at first. The claim was national self-determination of a people — the same basis as Polish, Czech, Armenian or Arab national movements — not 'a religion gets a country'. The Declaration of Independence promises equal rights 'irrespective of religion'.

   Traps here:◆ Which Zionism?◆ "What about you?"

   primary documentDeclaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (1948)

   Includes 'complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex'.

4. More context

   The consistency test: is this standard applied to anyone else?

   Pakistan was founded in 1947 explicitly as a homeland for the Muslims of British India. Iran, Mauritania, Afghanistan and Pakistan are Islamic republics; many Arab constitutions make Islam the state religion and sharia a source of law (e.g. Egypt's constitution, Article 2); Denmark and England have established churches. If religion can't be grounds for a state, the principle has to apply to them too — and it is almost never raised about them.

   primary documentLahore Resolution (All-India Muslim League) (1940)

   Demand for independent states for Muslim-majority areas; basis for Pakistan.

   law / courtConstitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt (2014), Article 2 (2014)

   Islam as state religion; principles of sharia the principal source of legislation.

5. Where it leads if pressed

   Either a general secularism argument — or a rule for Jews only.

   Applied consistently, the argument becomes a case for secular states everywhere, which one can make and which many Israelis make about their own country. Applied only to Israel, it denies Jewish peoplehood itself — telling Jews what they are, which is its own problem. The productive version is the domestic one: civil marriage, equal treatment, separating religious law from citizenship.