The Nation State of the Jewish People's Basic Law: A Threshhold of Elimination?

The Nation State of the Jewish People's basic law, passed in July 2018, constitutes a landmark in the evolution of Israel's settler-colonial nationalism and self-presentation. The law underscores the shift Israel has made from aligning itself with the Western liberal order to embracing, even spearheading, a radical right-wing populist worldview. The Jewish exclusivity and racism that the law embodies, I argue, did not result from changes in Israel's political and demographic landscape in the last two decades. Rather their genesis could be traced back to the debates which took place soon after Israel's establishment. Since then the desire for Jewish exclusivity has not dwindled but had been masqueraded through ideas of Israel's inimitability. The article discusses the mutations of these debates and their legal and policy effects.