nation-state bill

Apply for a Blog

Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Feb 28, 2025, 8:36 AM

When No News Is Good News: Israeli Arabs and Israel’s Wars

Human psychology being what it is, a major “flaw” is that we focus far more on what “is” than on what “isn’t”. There are some rare exceptions (e.g., an extended period of no rainfall), but the rule holds almost...

Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Dec 27, 2024, 8:00 AM

From the State of Israel to the State of Judea

While we are celebrating Hanukkah today, a question arises: why isn’t the State if Israel called the “State of Judea”? Not only was the last successful Jewish war of independence led by Judah Maccabee, but the nation that earlier...

Nov 26, 2023, 4:30 PM

The country that rescues its people wherever they are

Saleh Badriya, in his paramedic's uniform, poses with volunteers who helped organize an aid convoy from the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel in northern Israel to the city of Sderot in the south, October 8, 2023. (Courtesy, Saleh Badriya)

For all the discrimination in the 'nation-state law,' its clause including all Jews and all Israeli citizens in its global care is essential

James M. Dorsey

Apr 30, 2023, 6:28 PM

Shaping a 21st-century world order: The nation-state vs the civilizational state

US President Joe Biden positions the Ukraine war as a battle between autocracy and democracy. That reduces what is at stake in the war. The stakes constitute a fundamental building block of a new 21st-century world order: the nature...

Aug 5, 2022, 6:13 AM

How We Can Learn From Criticism of Israel

Israel is perhaps one of the most complicated countries on earth. After all, how many countries have their mere right to existence questioned? Besides Kosovo and Taiwan, among other small nations that may not receive recognition from other nations,...

May 19, 2022, 10:56 AM

Lt. Col. Mahmoud Khir al-Din (right) and his wife Nahed, in an undated photograph published by the military on May 15, 2022. (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel may be the only democracy in the world that has not enshrined in law a basic right that protects the minorities living within its borders

Apr 20, 2022, 7:12 PM

The Man on the Mountaintop

Come to your senses

Who still has files of their old work from 1982? (Hint: not this writer.) Imagine my surprise this morning to receive an email via my Times of Israel blog with the subject line: “The Man on the Mountaintop” -- being...

Sheldon Kirshner

Apr 5, 2022, 12:54 AM

Amnesty International’s Mea Culpa

Paul O'Brien, the director of Amnesty International's branch in the United States, has belatedly come clean, though some will sharply question his sincerity. In a letter a few days ago, he issued an apology to 25 Jewish Democrats in the...

Jul 16, 2021, 12:21 AM

What was the Nation State Law really about?

Protest against the Nation State Law, July 2018. Photo credit: Standing Together

Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the controversial 2018 Nation State Law. Ten of the eleven judges rejected claims that the quasi-constitutional law conflicted with democratic principles by discriminating against Israel’s Palestinian citizens in declaring that national self-determination in...

Sam Lehman-Wilzig

Jul 9, 2021, 1:40 PM

Israel’s New Basic Law: The Meaning of Nation-State

While yesterday’s Israeli Supreme Court ruling upholding the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law was unsurprising, neither were the attacks by the Left against that decision. However, the sharp divide between Left and Right on this issue is not simply “political”....

Load more