Basic Law

All 15 justices of Israel's High Court sit for a hearing on petitions against the government's amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, Jerusalem, September 12, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Will Israel’s High Court defy the far-right government?

As the Court hears petitions against the first judicial overhaul bill, Palestinian human rights lawyer Hassan Jabareen assesses the state of play.

By Ghousoon Bisharat September 15, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion reading Israel's Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv, May 14, 1948. (Zoltan Kluger/GPO)

Why Israeli efforts to write a constitution always fail

Resurrected by the protest movement, the idea of a constitution has been pursued throughout Israel's history. But opposition to equality foils its fruition.

By Dahlia Scheindlin April 4, 2023

MK Simcha Rotman, Head of the Knesset's Constitution Committee, poses for a picture at the Knesset, Jerusalem, January 17, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Welcome to Simcha Rothman’s vengeful coup

Embodying the rage that drives the Israeli right’s judicial assault, the chair of the Knesset’s Law and Justice Committee is poised to bring his once-fringe ideas to fruition. And, he tells +972, he is just getting started.

By Nate Orbach March 9, 2023

Latest

Israeli soldiers watch Palestinian women walk towards Qalandiya checkpoint, West Bank, August 20, 2010. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Israel’s Nation-State Law: ‘Apartheid is a process’

With the passage of the ‘Jewish Nation-State Law,’ Israel has constitutionally enshrined discrimination against its Palestinian population. ‘We don’t have to keep looking for policies that resemble Jim Crow,’ says Attorney Fady Khoury. The Israeli parliament passed the “Jewish Nation-State Law” in the early hours of Thursday morning, defining Israel as the exclusive nation-state of…

By Edo Konrad July 19, 2018

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in front of Israeli flags, July 20, 2014. (Photo by Haim Zach / GPO)

The ‘Jewish Nation-State Law’: Turning liberal Zionism on its head

Cementing the supremacy of national group rights over individual minority rights upends the precarious balance between Jewish and democratic, upon which liberal Zionism relies. For the ‘Nation-State Law’s authors and political patrons, however, this is just the beginning. Liberal Zionists of all stripes tend to have one thing in common: the belief — or at…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man November 28, 2014

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement to the press, November 11, 2014. (Photo by Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)

Is the ‘Jewish nation-state’ bill good for anyone at all?

A law seeking to prioritize and designate Israel as the Jewish nation-state is exposing the crazies in Israel’s government. This proposed basic law would codify and demarcate the state as something that belongs only to a subset of its citizens. The cabinet on Sunday passed a preliminary reading of a law — with the weight of a constitutional…

By Dahlia Scheindlin November 24, 2014

Israelis participate in the march of the Flags on May 20, 2012, Jerusalem (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The burden, and wall, of Zionism

Zionism has come to refer not to the many ways of building Israel, but to a litmus test. Any answer other than ‘I am a Zionist,’ is akin to being un-American in the 1950s. I didn’t join a Labor Zionist youth movement at 14 because I thought of myself as a Zionist. Actually I shied…

By Dahlia Scheindlin May 6, 2014

Threats to Israeli democracy, tolerance gather momentum

If the threat against Israeli democracy is not recognized and opposed, it will gather momentum until inevitably, one of democracy’s vital organs – tolerance, enshrined in law, for minority groups and minority opinions – will cease to function. By Rachel Liel One thing on which virtually all Israelis, from right to left, can agree is…

By +972 Magazine November 14, 2011