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The terms "Jewish state" and "homeland of the Jewish people" are used to describe the State of Israel,[1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6] and refer to its status as a nation-state for the Jewish people. The phrase "national home for the Jewish people" has evolved over the years since it originated and was used in official documents such as the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The concept of a national homeland for the Jewish people is enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel's public institutions. The concept was codified in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 as well as in the Law of Return, which was passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, and stated "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh."^[1]

Contents 1 Jewish state or a state of Jews? 2 A Jewish commonwealth 3 Public opinion 4 Criticism 5 Jewish self-governance throughout history 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

There has been ongoing debate in Israel on the character of the state, regarding whether it should enshrine more Jewish culture, encourage Judaism in schools, and enshrine certain laws of Kashrut and Shabbat observance. This debate reflects a historical divide within Zionism and among the Jewish citizens of Israel, which has large secular and traditional/Orthodox minorities as well as a majority which lies somewhere in between.

Secular Zionism, the historically dominant stream, is rooted in a concept of the Jews as a people and in a concept of international law as premised on the self-determination of peoples through the nation-state structure. Another reason sometimes submitted for such establishment was to have a state where Jews would not be afraid of antisemitic attacks and live in peace, although such a reason is not a requirement of the self-determination right and therefore subsidiary to it in secular Zionist thinking.

Religious Zionists, who believe religious beliefs and traditional practices are central to Jewish peoplehood, counter that assimilating to be a secular "nation like any other" would be oxymoronic in nature, and do more to harm than to help the Jewish people. They seek instead to establish what they see as an "authentic Jewish commonwealth" which preserves and encourages Jewish heritage.^[2] Drawing an analogy to diaspora Jews who assimilated into other cultures and abandoned Jewish culture, whether voluntary or otherwise, they argue that the creation of a secular state in Israel is tantamount to establishing a state where Jews assimilate en masse as a nation, and therefore anathema to what they view as Jewish national aspirations. Zionism is rooted in a concept of the Jews as a nation, in this capacity, they believe that Israel has a mandate to promote Judaism, to be the center of Jewish culture and center of its population, perhaps even the sole legitimate representative of Jews worldwide.

Partisans of the first view are predominantly, though by no means exclusively, secular or less traditional. Partisans of the second view are almost exclusively traditional or Orthodox, although they also include supporters who follow other streams of Judaism or are less traditional but conservative and would not object to a more prominent state role in promoting Jewish beliefs -- although not to the point of creating a purely Halachic state.

The debate is therefore characterized by significant polarities. Secular and religious Zionists argue passionately about what a Jewish state should represent. Anti-Zionists and Zionists argue about whether a Jewish state should exist at all. Having been created within the sphere of international law as the instrument for Jewish self-determination, the question of whether Israel is to maintain and strengthen its status as a state for the Jewish people, or transition to being a state purely for "all of its citizens", or identify as both — and, if both, how to resolve any tensions that arise from their coexistence — captures these polarities. Israel has, to date, steered a course between secularism and Jewish identity, usually depending on who controls the Israeli High Court of Justice.

Advocates of Israel becoming a more narrowly Jewish commonwealth face at least the following practical and theoretical difficulties:

1. How to deal with the non-Jewish Arab minority in Israel (and the non-Jewish majority in the West Bank and Gaza).
2. How to alleviate concerns of Jews in Israel who favor a relatively secular state.^[3]
3. What relationship should official Judaism hold vis-à-vis the Government of Israel and vice versa?^[4]
4. What role do schools play in supporting Jewish heritage, religion, culture, and state?^[5]
5. How will the government be organized (theocracy, constitutional theocracy, constitutional republic, parliamentary democracy etc.)?^[6]
6. Should the Justice system be based on secular common law, secular civil law, a combination of Jewish and common law, a combination of Jewish and civil law, or pure Jewish law?^[3]
7. On what mandate or legal principles should the constitution of a Jewish state be based?^[4]
8. How to integrate the economy of the state in line with Jewish law.^{[citation needed]}
9. On what mandate or legal principles should the constitution of a Jewish state be based?^[4]
10. How to integrate the economy of the state in line with Jewish law.^{[citation needed]}

Theorists who grapple with these issues focus on the future of the State of Israel and realize that although the sovereign political state has been established, there is still much work to be done in relation to the identity of the state itself.[7] [8]

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A poll commissioned by the Israel Democracy Institute in 2007 found that 75% of Arab-Israelis would support a constitution that maintained Israel as a Jewish state with equal minority rights:

A vast majority of Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, according to a poll whose results were published on Sunday.

Among the 507 people who participated in the poll, some 75 percent said they would agree with such a definition while 23 percent said they would oppose it.^[7]

Main articles: Nation state, New antisemitism, and Arab-Israeli conflict

The notion that Israel should be constituted in the name of and maintain a special relationship with a particular group of people, in the case the Jewish people, has drawn much controversy vis-à-vis minority groups living within the country — in Israel, the large number of Muslim and Christian Palestinians residing in Israel and, to the extent that those territories are claimed to be governed as part of Israel and not as areas under military occupation, in the West Bank and Gaza. For example, the Israeli National Anthem, the Hatikvah, refers to Jews by name as well as alluding to the concept of Zionism, and it contains no mention of Palestinian Arab culture. This anthem therefore excludes non-Jews, including the Palestinians, from its narrative of national identity. Similar criticism has been made of the Israeli flag which resembles the Tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) and features a Star of David, generally acknowledged as a symbol of Judaism. Critics of Israel as a Jewish nation state have suggested that it should adopt more inclusive and neutral symbolism.

Their opponents point out that in most other nation-states, national anthems and flags signify a particular ethnic or religious group, and both the flag and anthem of Israel derive from the Zionist struggle to create a Jewish nation state as a safe haven for Jewish refugees, a struggle in which Arabs who were opposed to such creation therefore figure as defeated opponents rather than as active participants.

In the course of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, its satellite states and agencies, as well as many Arab states, adopted the rhetoric presenting the concept of Zionism and the Jewish state as an embodiment of racism, imperialism and colonialism. International anti-Zionist campaign reached its height in 1975 with the passing of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 which equated Zionism with racism. It was revoked by UN General Assembly Resolution 4686 in 1991 after the USSR collapsed.

A linguist and a political commentator Noam Chomsky makes a distinction between the concept of "a Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine" and "a Jewish state" in his interview on C-SPAN:

"I have always supported a Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine. That is different from a Jewish state. There's a strong case to be made for an ethnic homeland, but as to whether there should be a Jewish state, or a Muslim state, or a Christian state, or a white state — that's entirely another matter."^{[citation needed]}

The Anti-Defamation League holds that singling Israel out from or uniquely excluding it from laws supporting self-determination is antisemitic.^[8] Some Jewish nationalists further base this line of argument on the Balfour Declaration and historical ties to the land, both of which play particular roles as evidence under international law, as well as a fear that a hostile Arab world might be disrespectful of a Jewish minority — alleging a variety of possible harms up to and including genocide — were Israel to become a post-national "state for all its citizens."

Main article: Proposals for a Jewish state

While nowadays the concept of a Jewish homeland means almost always the State of Israel under some variation of its current borders, in the course of the Jewish history after ancient Israel and Judah there have been other proposals. While some of those have come into existence, others never came to be implemented.

• Judenstaat
• Land of Israel / Palestine
• History of Israel
• Jewish Question
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Arab-Israeli conflict
• Binational solution
• 1947 UN Partition Plan
• Proposals for a Palestinian state
• Elon Peace Plan
• Christian Zionism
• Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State

• Israeli Jewish scene from ynetnews
• Israel as a Jewish state from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
• 'Israel a Jewish state first', says former High Court Justice Dalia Dorner