Ever since its creation, there have been debates and disagreements about the nature of the state of Israel. Formally, it's a secular democracy where Judaism is privileged; in reality, many orthodox Jews believe that Israel should be a theocratic state where Judaism is the supreme law of the land. Secular and orthodox Jews are at odds over the future of Israel and it's uncertain what will happen.
Eric Silver writes in the February, 1990 issue of Political Quarterly:
Israel’s Proclamation of Independence makes few concessions to the Almighty. The word ‘God’ does not appear, though there is a passing reference to trusting in the ‘Rock of Israel’. Israel, it decrees, will be a Jewish state, but the concept is nowhere defined. The state, it says, ‘will be based on the principles of liberty, justice and peace as conceived by the Prophets of Israel; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or sex; will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture; will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and will loyally uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter’.
Every student of modern Israel should reread the proclamation of May 14, 1948, at least once a year. It is a reminder of the secular vision of the founding fathers. Israel was to be a modern democratic state, an expression of Jewish nationalism rather than Jewish faith. The text reads as if the drafting committee was more familiar with the American and French revolutions than with the intricacies of Talmud. The phrase ‘as conceived by the Prophets of Israel’ is little more than rhetoric. Which of the Prophets were they talking about? Immediately after a clause proclaiming the ‘establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine’, the document promises that a constitution will be drawn up by a constituent assembly ‘not later than 1 October, 1948’. Forty-one years later, the people of Israel are still waiting, not least because of a reluctance by successive governments to define (and thus calcify) the Jewishness of the Jewish state.
Unfortunately, neither the conservative Likud nor the liberal Labour parties are able to form a government on their own — and they certainly don’t want to form one together. This means that creating a government requires that they join forces with the political parties of the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) who have adopted an unapologetically religious vision of Israel:
The Haredi parties are an anomaly. They represent the ghetto society against which Zionism rebelled a century ago, a narrow, introvert world fearful of innovation. At their most extreme they repudiate the creation of a Jewish state as an act of sacrilegious presumption. Rabbi Moshe Hirsh, a spokesman for the Netorei Karta sect in Jerusalem, explained: ‘God gave the holy land to the Jewish people on condition that they observe His commandments. When this stipulation was violated, the Jewish nation was exiled from the land. The Talmud teaches us that God charged the Jewish nation not to accelerate their redemption by force until He decides to return the Jewish nation to the land and the land to the Jewish people through His Messiah.’
Netorei Karta is consistent. It keeps out of electoral politics. It supports the Palestine Liberation Organisation on the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But it tries through specific, often violent, campaigns-against sabbath traffic, sexy swimsuit advertisements or archaeological excavations-to imprint its brand of Judaism on the citizens of Jerusalem.
