While I deeply believe that Israel should be a Jewish as well as democratic state, there are many ways to be a Jewish state without elevating one expression of Judaism over the others and denying the fundamental rights of so many Jewish citizens, and without denying non-Jewish citizens equal rights.

The phrase “Israel’s values as a Jewish and democratic state” reflects the uniqueness of the State of Israel and of Israeli society. We are not like all the nations; we are not like other states. We are a democracy, and our values are those of any democratic country. However, we are also a Jewish state, and are values are therefore the values of a Jewish state. Israeli society must contend with this duality.

I am a concerned Israeli. I’m afraid that when the dispute over the values embodied in a Jewish state dissipates, we will end up with something much simpler, much cruder: Jewish supremacy; a supremacy based not on values or heritage, but on ethnicity. White supremacy in the United States, Jewish supremacy in Israel.

The “Jewish state” definition means a Jewish collective conducting its affairs in accordance with Jewish values and actualizing through the state the model of a people living in the public realm as a Jewish people.

what is Israel’s mission as a Jewish state? To provide Jews with security in their national home, to strengthen Jewish existence around the world while aspiring to bring Jews abroad to Israel, and to set an example for other nations by demonstrating how a moral Jewish state takes an intelligent and inventive approach to the challenges posed by the complex world in which we all live.

The only way to avoid choosing between being either Jewish or democratic is for the conflict with the Palestinians to be resolved by providing the Palestinian people with the opportunity to fulfill their just collective right to self-determination in a separate state of their own.

The State of Israel, perhaps unique among the countries of the world, may be the only that refuses to refer itself by its nationality – “Israeli.” It disbelieves the existence of an Israeli nation, and as it grows older it has become ever more entrenched behind its “Jewish state” definition and has rejected the idea of “Israeliness.”

The state will not be more Jewish if it keeps out people who see themselves as Jews or if it refuses to designate as Jews those whose fathers are Jews or whose attachment to their Jewishness is clear as day. On the contrary: Israel will be much more Jewish if it realizes the vision of Minister Yisrael Bar-Yehuda and opens up a civil pathway to the recognition of Jewishness, alongside the rabbinical pathway.