The Two-Legislature Solution – Miscommunication
In one of my initial posts on the topic of the Two-Legislature Solution I quoted the English translation of the Israeli Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (sometimes referred as the Israeli Declaration of Independence) as presented on the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (https://www.gov.il/en/pages/declaration-of-establishment-state-of-israel) as follows:
“THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
Much of my understanding of the intentions of the founders of the State of Israel was based on this paragraph, that being that they intended that all inhabitants of Israel-Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would have equal social and political rights, but that this was overturned by circumstances outside of their control. I took this to mean that should hostilities cease and peace be attained the founders expected that equal rights would be extended to all inhabitants.
However, recently a Hebrew speaking friend pointed out that the Hebrew version of this document uses different words for the two instances of the word “inhabitants” from the English version that are highlighted above. The first instance that refers to “development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants” uses the Hebrew word “toshavim” which means “inhabitants”. But the second instance that refers to “ensur[ing] complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex” uses the Hebrew word “ezrahim” which means “citizens”.
It would be easy to weave a conspiracy theory about Jewish leaders in 1948 intentionally putting out one version for Jews in the British Mandate and another for the greater non-Hebrew speaking world, including most Jews in the diaspora and voting delegates to the United Nations. Regardless of the source of this miscommunication, the Hebrew reading of the second instance clearly shows an intention to create a two-tier system in Israel where “citizens” have guaranteed equal social and political rights whereas inhabitants who are not citizens will not.
One cannot but hearken back to US Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in his opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857 answering the question before the Court as to whether African Americans are citizens of the United States and thus able to file suit in federal court. He wrote, in part:
“The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement [i.e. the descendants of slaves, when they shall be emancipated, or who are born of parents who had become free before their birth] compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”
Of course Israelis have never suggested that Palestinians should be enslaved, but the question revolved around the idea that Black Americans had no rights because they were not citizens. Therefore the exclusion of equal rights to non-citizens in the Israeli Declaration of Independence makes this analogy pertinent. One asks whether the founders of the State of Israel sought to hide their intent to restrict the rights of those who do not attain citizenship through mistranslation.
This argument aside, the fact that Hebrew speakers and English speakers could have such diverse expectations of the actions and intentions of the Israeli governments, past and present, because of a simple miscommunication or mistranslation begs the question as to how many other misunderstandings between Israelis and those from other countries come down to thinking they understand the language of the other while in fact missing the nuance of the specific meaning and context of the words.