Professor Avi Diskin
Professor Avi DiskinArutz Sheva

Shaarei Science and Law Center's Kohelet Forum's Senior Fellow Prof. Avraham Diskin calls in an interview with Arutz Sheva to overcome the disputes and pass the Nationality Law.

"After seventy years it's time to have such a law. There was a lot of noise around the law. I didn't find a single one that had any justification. Basically, this is about the fact that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People. It's about the flag being such a flag, the language such a language, and Independence Day such a holiday, and so on," says Diskin.

He explains that opponents of the Nationality Law oppose the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People. "This law contains no violation of personal or collective rights of anyone else."

Prof. Diskin explains the Supreme Court is the main motive for passing the Nationality Law. "It's essential to have this law for three reasons; the first reason is that many in the world deny the right of the Jewish People to have its own nation state, which is acceptable in most countries of the world and certainly most of the democratic world: Countries that are nation-states that don't violate the rights of minorities; so in our case.

"Second, because there are opponents among us and not only among the minority living among us, but among the Jews there are also those who seek to harm this idea. The third reason is the Supreme Court's conduct that occasionally updates the Declaration of Independence and says there are equal rights regardless of religion, race, and nationality, but forgets the lion's portion of the Declaration of Independence that actually says this is the nation-state of the Jewish People. Therefore for these three reasons it's time to pass this law.

"In the end, it's a declarative law that repeats things that were said in other laws and simply gives principles the status of a basic law."

Prof. Diskin notes that the law does not harm the Arabic language, "I see no reason for the objections that have been said so far, for example on the Hebrew language which is the official language in the State of Israel. It's said Arabic has a special status and even made clear unequivocally that this law doesn't harm the status of the Arabic language," he said.

He calls to overcome the controversy surrounding the Jewish Law clause: "In my opinion, this section on Jewish law as a matter that can be used for interpretation is already included in the Judicial Foundations Law, it is not implemented in practice, it is a dead letter. To the best of my knowledge, the clause that moves the Judicial Foundations Law into the Nationality Law will probably not be written in order to prevent unnecessary riots. It is not a bad thing and not a good thing. It's also possible to do without the Jewish Law clause, which in any case is only declarative."