November 3, 2026|כ"ג חשון ה' אלפים תשפ"ז Why Israelis Hesitate When the Diaspora Cheers By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

Last week's election made Israel's friends abroad proud and many Israelis afraid. Israel's Arab citizens voted in record numbers, and the two Arab-majority parties won 19 seats between them, more than ever before. As Jacob Magid pointed out in a Times of Israel op-ed, how you saw that result depended on which side of the ocean you were on.

Abroad, some supporters of Israel started celebrating before the votes were even counted. Congressmen Josh Gottheimer and Tom Suozzi pointed to Arab Israelis voting, running for office and sitting in the Knesset as proof that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. In Israel, the mood was anxious. Most leaders of the anti-Netanyahu bloc ruled out governing with the Arab parties, and many Israeli Jews saw the results as a security question first and a democracy question second.

The divide is not as neat as it looks. Many American Jews feel both things at once: pride that Israel's democracy is real, and worry about what these results mean. That worry is not just a feeling. If 19 seats belong to parties that most other parties won't govern with, a coalition needs 61 of the remaining 101 seats. That's about 60 percent, not a simple majority. If this becomes the norm, it will be much harder to form a stable government in Israel.

Magid sharply criticizes how Netanyahu has delegitimized Arab voters, and how opposition leaders have followed his lead. Some of that rhetoric deserved his criticism. But I want to argue that the core of Israeli caution is justified. It does not come from a weak commitment to democracy. It comes from a clear understanding of what a Jewish and democratic state is: one that guarantees rights to every citizen, but asks something more of those who want to help govern it.

What a Jewish and democratic state is

When politicians like Gottheimer and Suozzi say "Jewish and democratic," they lean almost entirely on the second word. Democracy is what answers the apartheid smear and makes Israel easy to defend in the West. From that angle, every Arab vote counts in Israel's favor, and the more power the Arab parties have, the better Israel looks.

We should be proud that Arab citizens vote freely, run for office and serve in the Knesset. But this way of thinking quietly turns "Jewish" into a population statistic rather than a purpose. On this view, Israel looks best when it looks most like every other Western democracy. That is not the Zionist idea of a Jewish and democratic state.

The late Israeli legal scholar Ruth Gavison argued, in essays such as "Israel's Vision: Jewish and Democratic," that being Jewish and democratic is not a contradiction. It is a balance between national identity and rights for all.

For centuries, Jews lived as a vulnerable minority. We faced persecution, forced conversion, discrimination and exclusion. That is why we needed a homeland where Jews could be the majority and live their heritage fully. Gavison pointed out that nation-states built around one people are normal around the world. Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, is no different.

A Jewish state, she explained, can celebrate its heritage through its language, holidays and schools without giving up democracy, as long as it protects basic rights for all its citizens: freedom of religion, freedom of speech and full participation in elections. Gavison also insisted that Israel's Jewishness is national, not religious. A "Jewish state," she wrote, is like an "Arab state" or a "German state," not a "Christian state" or a "Muslim state." She admitted that Arab citizens can't be expected to embrace this vision fully, but argued that they should accept that it is legitimate.

Her distinction needs one clarification. Israel's public life does have religious features. Shabbat shapes the public calendar, state institutions keep kosher, and the Chief Rabbinate controls Jewish marriage. Her point is about what citizenship requires. The state asks Arab citizens to accept that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, not to share the Jewish faith. As a religious Jew, I see deep religious meaning in that national project, and later in this piece I look at it through the story of Yitzchak and Yishmael. But that is my lens, not a requirement for anyone else.

Rights for every citizen, a role for partners

Gavison's framework points to a further distinction, between the rights of citizens and the job of governing. Rights belong to every citizen, with no conditions. Governing is different. Joining the coalition means helping to steer the country. In a parliamentary democracy, anyone who can put together 61 seats can govern, and no law says a coalition partner must support Zionism. But parties choosing partners have every right to ask whether a potential partner accepts what the country is. A Jewish nation-state should welcome anyone into government, minorities included, as long as they accept that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. That is not a loyalty test aimed at Arabs. It is the basic premise of the country they would be helping to run.

Israeli law already draws a version of this line, but at a much lower level. Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset bars a party from running if it denies that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, incites racism, or supports armed struggle against Israel by an enemy state or terror group. But Israel's Supreme Court reads this law narrowly and uses it only in extreme cases. It has repeatedly overturned attempts by the Central Elections Committee to ban Arab parties and candidates, including the Balad party and MKs Ahmad Tibi and Hanin Zoabi. In 2003, it let Azmi Bishara run by a 7-4 vote. Four years later, he fled Israel while under investigation for allegedly helping Hezbollah during the 2006 war.

This is not an argument for banning more candidates. A democracy should lean toward letting citizens run. But it shows that being allowed on the ballot is not the same as being fit to govern. That decision belongs to the parties when they choose their coalition partners.

Yitzchak and Yishmael: a role and a blessing

This difference between rights and role runs through the Torah's earliest story about the covenant and those outside it.

In Parshat Vayera, Avraham throws a big feast to celebrate Yitzchak, the son through whom God has promised to continue the covenant. At the feast, Sarah sees Yishmael, Avraham's older son by Hagar, "metzachek" (Bereishit 21:9). The Ramban explains that Yishmael was mocking Yitzchak and the celebration in his honor. Only then does Sarah ask Avraham to send Yishmael and Hagar away. Even then, the Ramban notes, she does not want Yishmael harmed. She only wants him kept from sharing Yitzchak's inheritance.

Avraham is deeply pained, but God tells him to listen to Sarah: "ki b'Yitzchak yikarei lecha zara," it is through Yitzchak that your line will continue (21:12). The covenant belongs to Yitzchak.

But in the very next verse God adds, "v'gam et ben ha'amah l'goy asimenu ki zarachah hu": the maidservant's son will also become a nation, because he too is your child. Avraham sends them off with bread and water. When the water runs out in the desert, God hears the boy crying, shows Hagar a well and promises again to make Yishmael a great nation. The Torah says simply, "Vayehi Elokim et ha'naar," God was with the boy (21:20).

The story answers two different questions. What role does Yishmael have in the covenant? None; that belongs to Yitzchak. What is he worth as a person? Everything. God hears him, saves him and blesses him.

Notice what led to the separation. Yishmael was not sent away for being Hagar's son, or for being outside the covenant. He was sent away when he mocked Yitzchak's place. Even then, what he lost was a role, not his dignity or God's care.

No one is being sent away from Israel today; Arab citizens are at home here. But the story teaches a clear lesson about coalitions. What should keep a party out of government is not that it is Arab. It is a stance that mocks or rejects Israel's character as the Jewish state. We fully affirm the God-given worth of our non-Jewish neighbors. Israel's chosenness is a role, not a ranking of human value. The line is drawn around the role, never around the person.

Why caution is justified after October 7

The worry in Israel is not that minorities might sit in government. Netanyahu himself courted Ra'am after the 2021 election, and Ra'am went on to sit in the 2021–2022 coalition. An i24NEWS analysis notes that it never blocked a single military operation. Critics point out that the coalition's one major Gaza operation came only after the Knesset had voted to disband. But that is an argument about timing, not about how Ra'am behaved as a partner. The worry, after October 7, is about partners who won't fully condemn Hamas, or who won't give Israel the same right to defend itself against terror that they would give any other country.

On that question, both Arab parties' records give real reason to hesitate. Mansour Abbas deserves credit. He has accepted Israel's Jewish character for years, even if he calls it a fact imposed on Arab citizens, and he condemned the October 7 massacre. But in a radio interview this July, he was asked again and again whether Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be destroyed. He answered, "I don't want to give you an unequivocal answer." In May 2024, he called Hamas a legitimate part of the Palestinian people, then tried to clarify the remark the next day. More recently, he has said he hasn't ruled out meeting Gadi Eisenkot's condition on Hamas, and that it's a matter for coalition talks. That is a hopeful sign, but it is not yet the clear answer this moment needs.

The Joint List is further away still. According to Times of Israel analysis, its platform presents the party as an alternative to the "racist Zionist consensus" and to "Jewish supremacy," and accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. Its chairman, Yousef Jabareen, has repeatedly refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

This is not an abstract debate. On October 7, Hamas murdered and kidnapped Arab citizens of Israel along with Jewish ones. Hamas is not only the enemy of Israel's Jews; it is the enemy of every Israeli. That is why hedging on Hamas is so hard to accept from anyone seeking a share of power, including parties that represent the very communities it attacked.

Israel still faces threats on several fronts, and its next government will make life-and-death decisions about Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. It is not paranoid to ask whether a coalition that depends on partners who can't say Hamas must be defeated would hold together when it counts. Two of Eisenkot's conditions for any partner, accepting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and treating Hamas as a terror group to be dismantled, are not racism. They are the minimum we should ask of anyone, Jewish or Arab, who wants to help lead the country.

Why the door should stay open

Caution must not turn into suspicion of everyone. No Arab citizen's vote is illegitimate. A Jewish nation-state that protects every citizen's rights is not anti-democratic, and neither is choosing coalition partners by what they stand for.

Keeping the door open is not only a matter of principle. With nearly a sixth of the Knesset outside any likely coalition, Israel has a real interest in an Arab party that can be a partner. An Arab party that accepts Israel as the Jewish state and stands clearly behind its right to defend itself against Hamas would be welcome, for reasons of both security and faith. The two conditions go together. A partner who accepts the Jewish state in principle but won't say Hamas must be defeated accepts the state's existence without its right to protect it. Yishmael lost his place when he mocked Yitzchak's, and a party loses its claim to govern when it rejects the Jewish state or hedges about those who want to destroy it. Until such a party emerges, the story of Avraham's two sons offers the right model: full dignity and blessing for every human being, and a Jewish state that is ours to protect.