Over Half of Israel’s Jews Do Not Want to Live in a ‘Jewish State’

21st Century Wire says…

Israel markets itself to the world as “the Jewish State.” As it turns out however, most of the their own residents do not want to live in such a place. 

The concept of a “religious state” should be an anathema in the modern 21st century world, but for a few select entities like Israel and Saudi Arabia – it seems to be tolerated by the ‘international community’, probably because of the invaluable strategic role which those two entities provide for the US and Europe.

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Crazed Israeli settlers attack an elderly Palestinian women (Source: Middle East Monitor)

RT

Some 55 percent of Jewish Israelis would like a review of the longstanding policy that sees Judaism and the state fused to a great extent, a new poll shows. The same percentage of respondents believe the current policy reflects an ultra-Orthodox view.

The authors of the survey, which was commissioned by the Israel Democracy Institute, asked groups of Israel’s Jewish population with various religious backgrounds about their opinion on the status quo, a consensus on the role of religion in the life of the Jewish state reached between secular and religious parties that dates back to its early days.

The main pillars of the policy were outlined in a letter by one of Israel’s founders, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, from June 1947, and later enshrined in Israeli law. That includes limiting business and public activity on Shabbat, putting rabbinical courts solely in charge of any matters concerning marriage and divorce of Jewish Israelis and not allowing the option of a civil marriage for anyone. As for the non-Jewish population, including Christians and Muslims, the letter purported to guarantee a freedom of conscience giving them permission not to follow Shabbat and providing other exceptions.

While two-thirds of secular Israelis surveyed said that the present secular-religious status chimes with the views of “haredi” or ultra-Orthodox Israelis, nearly 100 percent of them favored the idea of mitigating the role of religion or separating it from the state altogether, the Jerusalem Post reported…

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