Joy Greenhouse and Martin Gallin (March 31 and April 5 letters) take pleasure in using such high-flown language: "Israel is a democracy," "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East." But Israel characterizes itself as a Jewish state. And a Jewish state cannot claim to be a democracy, no more than a Christian or an Islamic state can. Democracy cannot be qualified.

Palestinian Christians and Muslims living within Israel's boundaries have Israeli citizenship but not the Israeli nationality. The two terms are interchangeable in the United States but not in Israel. Citizenship (ezrahut), in Israel, may be held by Christians and Muslims as well as Jews, while nationality (le'um), which bestows significantly greater rights than citizenship, may be claimed by Jews, and Jews alone. As Rabbi Elmer Berger put it: "any Jew in the world has more national rights in Israel than any Arab/Palestinian Israeli citizen."

Israel discriminates also against Americans. To Jewish Americans, Israel will give automatic citizenship, which is denied to all other Americans precisely because they are non-Jews. Regarding such practice, the Congress declared that "any distinction made by a foreign nation between American citizens because of race, color or religion in the granting of, or the exercise of personal or other rights available to American citizens is repugnant to our citizens."

So, is Israel a democracy? By Zionism standards, yes, just as South Africa is a democracy by apartheid standards.

April 17, 1991

Medhat Credi (April 17 letter) [21] expresses another lie of Arab propaganda. The truth is that Israel grants citizenship to all refugees (as evidenced by the Vietnamese boat people and the flood of Jewish immigrants and their non-Jewish spouses from Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, South America and elsewhere). Any immigrant, of any religion, must commit himself to a process of naturalization modeled after that in the United States and the entire Western world. All Arabs living in Israel have citizenship and representation locally and in the Knesset. Israel is the most multi-racial and multi-ethnic country there is. If the Arabs would stop engaging in indiscriminate knifings of Israeli civilians and end acts of terrorism, they could stop whining about the fear which many Israelis feel toward them. There are so many opportunities in a country of such diversity.

The Credi credo is "Defame Israel, Jews and Zionism (the national liberation movement of the Jewish people) as much as possible." This because a lie, told often enough, and in writing, will eventually remain in the memory of the reader.

If the Arabs were to end their state of war with Israel, they could stop hating Jews, a hatred which must be difficult to live with. They could then work at creating at least one democracy, and stop bringing terrorism, war and devastation upon innocent civilians.

I do not think that Medhat Credi has much to teach Israel about democracy. His mind is too clouded by raw bigotry and hatred. The fact that 200 million Arabs refuse to live alongside 4 million Jews shows the need for intensive, long-term psychotherapy in the Arab world. Any volunteers?

Betty Berenson, Scarsdale

April 26, 1991

I have seen lots of fact-distortions cunningly devised by apologists of Israel, and I have seen few of them unskillfully devised. Betty Berenson's fact distortions in her letter of April 26 [22] fall in the second category.

She accuses Medhat Credi (April 17 letter) [21]of expressing "another lie of Arab propaganda" and goes on saying "the truth is that Israel grants citizenship to all refugees... All Arabs living in Israel have citizenship." What did Mr. Credi say in his letter that can be qualified as a "lie"? He said: "Palestinian Christians and Muslims living within Israel's boundaries have Israeli citizenship" and he added "but not Israeli nationality." It doesn't take a literary critic to see that it is Betty Berenson who is lying--by omission, a classical example of how Israeli propaganda distorts what other people say and a phenomenon that has reached pathological proportions.

The rest of her letter, crammed with gratuitous accusations that discredit only those who make them, is just standard verbiage used by blind supporters of Israel to dilute the facts when they run out of arguments. If telling the truth means, in the eyes of Betty Berenson and the pro-Israelis, to defame Israel, so be it, because it is about time for the American people to know the truth about Israel, "a deeply anti-Christian country", according to Joseph Sobran, which "has eliminated the plus sign from math textbooks because the plus sign (yes, this: +) looks like a cross!" Is this fact another lie of "Arab propaganda?"

May 15, 1991

In his letter to the editor of April 17 [21], Medhat Credi complains that Israel is not a true democracy because everyone of every religion cannot automatically become a citizen of Israel.

I would like to point out that virtually no democracy accepts everyone who applies. Every legal alien can only enter this country under a restricted quota system which many people consider discrimination. At this very time the United States continues its policy not to admit Kurds.

What are the facts about Israel?

17 percent of the total population are non-Jews, most of them Arabs, and some Druze. Like all other Israeli citizens, they have full rights to vote and to hold elective office. Both Arabs and Druze hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. It is official policy of the Israeli government to foster language, culture and traditions of the Arab minority. Arabic is an official language in Israel, together with Hebrew. Israel's Arabic press is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region: there are more than 20 Arabic periodicals. They publish what they please, subject only to the same military censorship as Jewish publications. There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic. Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools. Israeli universities are renowned centers of learning in the history and literature of the Arab Middle East. The literacy rate among Israeli Arabs is 95 percent virtually the same as for Israeli Jews. 95 percent of Arab children attend school, probably the highest ratio of any Arab population anywhere. All religious communities in Israel enjoy the full protection of the state. Israeli Arabs--Muslims, as well as many Christian denominations--are free to exercise their faiths, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays, and to administer their own internal affairs. The holy sites of all religions are administered by their own authorities and protected by the government.

In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men. Israeli law grants women equal rights, including the right to vote and to be elected to public office, prohibits polygamy and child marriage, and has thus vastly changed the status of women to far above that of any country in the region. Israeli health standards are by far the highest in the Middle East. Israeli health institutions are freely open to all Arabs, on the same basis as the Jews.

Lawrence Newman, Katonah

April 30, 1991

Lawrence Newman, in his letter of April 30 [27], is right when he says that "virtually no democracy accepts everyone who applies" for citizenship; but he is wrong when he says that "everyone of every religion cannot automatically be a citizen of Israel" because every Jew can automatically be a citizen of Israel according to its Citizenship Law of 1952.

Newman is also right when he says that "every legal alien can only enter this country under a restricted quota system," that is why this country is a democracy; but he is wrong if he thinks that Israel has a quota system for Jews. It doesn't. All Jews and only Jews are granted the right to immigrate to Israel according to the Law of Return of 1950. That is why Israel cannot be considered a democracy in the Western sense. Not only can such practices be qualified as discrimination but also as racism based on religion. What would Mr. Newman's reaction be if this country had similar laws that favor WASPs?

The only exception to the Law of Return that I know of is when Jonathan Pollard, after his spying activities for Israel had been discovered by the FBI, drove with his wife into the Israeli Embassy compound in Washington expecting to be routinely granted asylum under the Law of Return. Realpolitik was favored here over the Law of Return.

May 14, 1991

Recently, this newspaper has printed several letters stating the Arab viewpoint of Israeli democracy, each one of course very critical and condemning Israel.

No doubt it has its flaws, but taken from the perspective of the entire gulf region, it takes on a different coloring. Within that region, there are Arab states that cut off hands of criminals caught stealing. There are still countries where women haven't any rights at all, where any form of dissent is not permitted, countries where the press cannot criticize the government.

Israel, as it is, has about a dozen newspapers, each with its own viewpoint. It has about nine political parties, each with its own agenda.

A country where every citizen can speak his mind--that is a democracy, flawed as it may be.

These freedoms do not exist in any Arab country. There is no democracy in any Arab state.

Where they permit free speech to be muzzled, they do not deserve a democracy.

In a democracy, the political parties range from extreme left to extreme right, with moderates in between. They all voice opinions, some offering change, some wanting to retain the status quo. That's a democracy. And that's what Israel is.

Fuller Jackson, N. White Plains

May 24, 1991

Fuller Jackson in his letter of May 24 [29] wants us to look at Israel's democracy "from the perspective of the entire gulf region." But this is not Shamir's perspective when he says on American TV that Israel is a democracy. Not a single American will believe an Arab leader if he says that his country is a democracy but most will if Shamir says so about Israel. That is why it is the Western yardstick that should be used to gauge Israel's democracy. In Western democracies, all citizens are equal by law. In the Israeli version of democracy, to use Orwell's famous phrase, the Jewish citizens are "more equal than others."

The Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights of 1989 stated that "Israeli's Arab citizens have ... not shared fully in the rights granted to ... Jewish citizens." Chief among these rights is the ownership or use of the land. 92 percent of Israel's land, much of which has been expropriated from Arabs, is "national" (i.e., Jewish) land, administered by a "national" institution, the Jewish National Fund, for Israel's "national" constituency, the Jewish people. Jews have full rights with regard to land; by law, Christians and Muslims cannot even lease that land, let alone own it.

It is the official policy of the Israeli government to buy land from non-Jews for the purpose of Judaizing it, a racist process called the redemption of the land aimed at adding land to the lands on which non-Jews are prohibited to live. Moreover, Jews have the freedom to purchase property rights in Christian and Muslim quarter of old Jerusalem and live there if they choose to do so; the Jewish Quarter, however, is by law an area where only Jews can live. This is "democracy" apartheid-style.

June 5, 1991

Aly Abul Kheir claimed in a June 5 letter [30] that Israel is not a democracy and that her Law of Return is racist.

He bases his claim on one sentence in the State Department's 1989 Country Reports on Human Rights which says that, "Israel's Arab citizens have not shared fully in the rights granted to and the duties levies on, Jewish citizens." But, in Mr. Abul-Kheir's letter, he left out the "duties" part of the quote, which totally changes the meaning of the sentence from what Mr. Abul-Kheir claims it means.

The sentence refers to post-service benefits received by those Israelis who serve in the military. Israeli Arab citizens are not required to serve in the military but some volunteer. Those that do receive the same (GI) after-service benefits that Israeli Jews receive. The report does not say that Israeli Arabs have fewer rights than Israeli Jews. Nowhere in this report is there the slightest criticism of Israel's land ownership or leasing laws as Mr. Abul-Kheir suggests when he claims that Arabs can't buy or lease land in Israel. His claim is not accurate.

To say that Israeli Arabs are denied the right to buy state lands is a half-truth. Israeli Jews cannot buy state lands either. Both, however, can and do lease it.

State lands comprise 78 percent of the land in Israel and that land can be leased by Israeli Arab or Israeli Jew alike. The Jewish National Fund owns 12 percent of all the land in Israel, which is only leased to Jews. The remaining 10 percent is owned privately and can be rented, sold or leased as the owners choose.

Israeli Arabs comprise 18 percent of the population and they live throughout Israel in homes they own or lease. They farm land that they own or lease.

This same State Department report did say that "Israel is a democracy with strong guarantees of freedom for all religious faiths and that Israeli citizens have a range of civil and other rights generally comparable to those in advanced Western democracies."

James Davidson, Briarcliff Manor

July 9, 1991

The bottom line in the debate over land in Israel (James Davidson letter of July 9 [34]) is that Israeli citizens do not have equal access to the land. Prof. Uzi Ornan, in an article in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz of February 10 of this year, under the suggestive title "An Amazing resemblance of South-Africa" stated that "The ownership of land in Israel is the preserve of the Israel Lands Authority, and in accordance with an agreement with the Jewish National Fund, it imposes restrictions required by the (said) Fund on the land under its control, which land is not sold but only leased out. ...Those registered as 'Jews' have full rights in regard to most of the land, cities, and settlements; those who are not registered as 'Jews' are barred from owning real estate in most sectors of the country."

Furthermore, Article 3 of the Constitution of the Jewish National Fund states that land "is to be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people," and "in all works and undertakings carried out or furthered by the Jewish National Agency it shall be deemed to be a matter of principle that Jewish labor shall be employed."

Suffice it to say that a provision like this one in a similar U.S. national institution, favoring Christians over Jews would have caused an uproar. But the fact is that this can only be perfectly normal in a racist state like Israel.

July 15, 1991

In your December 18 editorial, you stated that "Zionism is not racism." The question is not so much whether Zionism is racism than whether Israel is a racist state.

Take, for instance, the issue of citizenship. Unlike the United States, every country does not grant citizenship by birth to an infant born on its soil, but it definitely does if his parents are citizens. Israel, however, is the only country that I know of in which citizenship is not granted by birth to an infant whose parents are citizens. As a Jewish state, Israel devised a system to legalize discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens. For Jews, citizenship is granted by "return", and can be granted only by "return"; furthermore, only Jews can be granted citizenship by "return" even if actually there is no return involved. For non-Jews, citizenship is determined by "residence". Thus under Israeli law, any Jew in the world has the right to "return" after an "absence" of 2,000 years, but the displaced Palestinians of 1948, after a real absence of only 43 years, are denied the same right, precisely because they are not Jews. This is racism.

Another example is the question of annexation. Referring to the peace talks, Shamir said that "the mission of Israel's negotiators is to achieve peace without giving up land." If this is the case, why not annexing the land? The problem is that annexing will turn Israel from a Jewish state into a "bi-national" state. A code word used by Israel (that the media finds acceptable unlike the code words used by David Duke) indicating that accepting a huge number of Goyim, i.e., non-Jews, will alter the exclusive Jewish character of the State. If this is not racism what is? Having said that, one question remains: If Shamir doesn't want to give up the land and doesn't want to annex it with its population, what is his final solution to the problem of almost two million of its inhabitants, since circumstances similar to those of 1948 that permitted the massacres perpetrated by Irgun and LEHI in Deir Yasin and by the Haganah at Dueima to instill fear in the Palestinians and force them to flee are not likely to arise again?

January 9, 1992

Please don't refer to Israel as the "Jewish state" any longer since it is shedding its Jewish identity.

Israel was established as a homeland for the Jews. From Spain to Czechoslovakia, Poland to Austria, Russia to Germany, and from century to century, oppressive governments crushed this homeless people. Finally, as ordered by the United Nations, Israel became the only safe haven in the world for the Jews. In their own state, they could make their own rules, ensure their own security and not rely on the whims of other rules. The Jewish future was in Jewish hands.

Now, however, Israel faces a formidable philosophical question: Is a completely democratic state more important than a Jewish state? For example, by allowing Arabs to hold the deciding vote in a crucial Knesset election, hasn't Israel abandoned the idea of a Jewish state? There were 61 supporters for Rabin's territorial compromise. Five of them were Arabs. Therefore, only 56 Jews supported the plan; 56 Jews Knesset members is not a Jewish majority. Furthermore, 50 Jewish members of Knesset opposed the plan and seven Jewish Mks abstained. In fact, the majority of the Jewish MKs did not support the plan. there were 57 Jewish members who did not support this crucial decision vs. 56 who did. Is it appropriate to allow the Arabs to swing this vote in a Jewish state?

No one should oppose permitting a local population to direct its own day-to-day affairs. Arabs should elect their own mayors, run their own schools and hospitals, and manage their own utilities. However, if they participate in votes that arguably endanger national security, Israel is no longer a state run by Jews for the benefits of Jews. Arabs have their 22 states; the Jews have one. Israel cannot afford to relax their security policies now lest it lead to the end of the national dream.

Douglas Goldstein, Scarsdale

October 6, 1993

Douglas Goldstein's letter of October 6 [114] is an echo of a long article written by Ariel Sharon in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot last May and reprinted in an abridged form in the Jerusalem Post on June 2. Both of them candidly put their fingers on Israel's dilemma which Glodstein presented in the form of a philosophical question: "Is a completely democratic state more important than a Jewish State?" By asking this question, Mr. Glodstein implicitly acknowledges that there is a contradiction in terms between being democratic and Jewish.

Reviewing the efforts that led to the creation of Israel, Sharon also acknowledged that they were undemocratic. The 1917 Balfour Declaration which promised a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine "ignored the opinion of 90 percent of the population." The 1947 UN resolution partitioned Palestine "against the will of the Palestinian Arabs who were the overwhelming majority of the population." Even the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel proclaims "in four places," according to Sharon, that the state is Jewish "without defining it as 'democratic'." Regarding the Law of Return, thanks to which only Jews are automatically granted Israeli citizenship, Sharon rhetorically asked: "Does any law book contain any more undemocratic statute than the Law of Return?"

But the problem of Israel goes even beyond being a democraticor a Jewish state. Because when Mr. Goldstein makes such a statement: "the majority of the Jewish MKs did not support the plan" or when he asks such a question: "Is it appropriate to allow the Arabs to swing this vote in a Jewish state?" that's plain racism. The sad thing about this is that, as the Israeli novelist and journalist David Grossman put it in a New York Times Magazine article, "Israel today does not have the psychological force or the moral power to deal with the problem of the Palestinian minority."

October 15, 1993