Nation-State law – Is it Really a well Thought-Out law? Is It a Party manifesto or a Parliamentary act?

Abstract

The author offers an analysis of the controversial Israeli Nation-State Law of 2018 and B. Netanyahu’s involvement in its adoption. He claims that its ideas manifest Netanyahu’s desire to depart from the state-centred, social democratic, and liberal views advocated by Ben Gurion. This desire stems from his strong disagreement with Israel’s founder’s claim and belief that secularism is a guarantee that Israel does not fall into the same trap as the leaders of the bicentennial Crusades – which ultimately failed. The author of the paper makes an insightful comparison of this law with the contents of Point 13 of Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 plan – a docu-ment from exactly 100 years before, designed to shape Europe after victory in the war against Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary, on whose lands an independent Polish state was to be established.