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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

I think therein lies the complexity of the problem when the state itself maintains a population record where citizenship and nationality have been separated, and "Israeli" nationality does not exist, only "Jewish" exists. I believe this was also confirmed by the Supreme Court there in order to ensure a clear link or bond between all Jewish people all over the world. Anyway, what do I know.

I am not trying to explain away Dahl's comments, merely illustrating the complexity underlining all these arguments, and especially ones which allow Israel and its lobbyists to swarm over the arts in the UK and bully them if showing any sympathy for the Palestinians, which is no better than the torrent of antisemitic abuse meted out when there's sympathy for Jewish people.

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> and "Israeli" nationality does not exist, only "Jewish" exists

This is facially untrue: there are over two million non-Jewish Israeli nationals[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel

This article underlines the point I made. Israel maintains separate data on citizenship and nationality on their population, and "Israeli" is not a "nationality" in that database. Of course Arab nationals of Israel have "Israeli" on their passports, but they are not "Israeli" in that database.

There are two different things here: what non-Jewish citizens of Israel identify as, and what their functional status is. The first is a component of the world’s most intractable conflict; the second is a question of nationality in the most basic sense: citizenship, identification on passports, etc.

The second sense is the one I’m interested in, and in that one there are plenty of non-Jewish Israeli nationals. They have every right (and plenty of cause) to not identify as such, but that’s the situation as it concerns citizenship, voting rights, etc.

TL;DR: nationality gets used with at least two different meanings in the I/P conflict; one is intractable and the other is straightforward. The straightforward is worth remembering, because far-right Israelis have a vested interest in eliminating it and imposing an ethnic definition of nationality.

No dispute from me, simply pointing that the state itself pursues a different direction than most on this subject by separating the two things.

On your final point, I think we may well be seeing a theocratic majority there quite soon, will be interesting to see how that goes.

It's complicated but I think what they're getting at is that the national demographics / census data for Israel does not have an "Israeli" nationality.

>and "Israeli" nationality does not exist, only "Jewish" exists.

This lie lies at the heart of all of the state's attempts to color fundamentally anti genocide, anti genocide and antiracist criticism of the state as anti semitic.

The country does not represent Jews, just a rather abhorrent form of racism.

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