Israel - Jewish State or Democracy

As much as we tout Israel as a democracy, this book review of 'The Hebrew Republic,' by Bernard Avishai by raised some questions:

"Can Israel be both a Jewish state and a democracy? At first glance the answer is yes. Governments are chosen by universal franchise, including perhaps one and a quarter million Israeli Arabs, who have their own non- or anti-Zionist political parties. Israel has an independent judiciary, an aggressive free press and a robust civil society. But non-Jews do not enjoy equal civil rights, mainly because of the Zionist, Haredi and settler states-within-a-state. As Avishai writes, “the institutions designed to advance the heroic Zionist state have become unworkable for the democratic one.”

It is almost impossible for non-Jews to buy land owned by the state or the Jewish National Fund. There is no secular marriage in Israel. Orthodox rabbis control the process of conversion, deciding who is a Jew and thus, often, who is a citizen. Mixed couples cannot be buried together in a state-funded Jewish cemetery. Even more absurd, Israel is probably the only country in the world that does not recognize its own nationality. Israelis cannot be inscribed as Israelis in the state population register, but must be recorded according to their religious or ethnic origin. Every request by Israelis — Jewish and Arab — to be listed simply as Israeli has so far been rejected. The government argues t"