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The current academic and legal campaign to constitutionalize Israel as a state that is both 'Jewish and democratic' amounts to an act of national self-deception, rooted in the collective inability or unwillingness to accept that discriminatory policies toward the non-Jewish minority contradict democratic processes, on the part of that country's Jewish majority. The author addresses the recent efforts to create an Israeli constitution by the consent of the Jewish majority that would legitimatize the denial of equal citizenship rights for non-Jewish citizens. Because Israeli Jews have constructed opposition to the 'Jewish and democratic' model as 'extremism,' Palestinian citizens of Israel are forced to limit their resistance to passive rejection of the concept, refusing to acquiesce in their own subordination and denying moral legitimacy to the system that discriminates against them.

A discussion on the need of Israelis and American-Jews to re-think their politics in the wake of the September 11 attacks and other developments is presented. The fact that Jewish interests remain inextricably linked with a progressive, liberal United States and hence the need for a new Jewish political discourse to re-invent the political traditions forged by Jews when they first came to America is highlighted.

Byline: BETH MCMURTRIE The dismissal of two Israeli scholars from the boards of two British journals of translation studies has created a intercontinental academic rift that grows wider by the [...]