Here’s Why So Many Are Outraged by Israel’s Nation-State Law

The text of the law's main article embodies the essence of Zionism and the state of Israel. Not so, the context envisioned by the law's promoters.

“Why all the outrage over Israel’s nation-state law?,” ask, innocently, Moshe Koppel and Eugene Kontorovich in Mosaic.

The answer is: context. Just as Koppel and Kontorovich don’t trust Israel’s “activist and politically-biased [Supreme] Court” to interpret properly any law that would enshrine the broad concept of “equality”—thereby admitting that context matters immensely to them, too—we don’t trust this Israeli government and this law’s political promoters to interpret Zionism properly.

Only one article in the nation-state law truly matters and entails clear political consequences. It is article 1(c): “The exercise of the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique [our emphasis] to the Jewish people.” All other articles flow from this one.