To What Nation do I Belong?

A practice of "breaking law" in country of residence when it is contradictory to Human Rights and to the commitment to Mondcivitan thoughts:-

In Israel there is a delicately odd situation concerning the nationality, the citizenship and the personal (marital) status of the inhabitants. While an Israeli-born Arab (Muslim, Druze or Christian) might not get his citizenship of the State of Israel automatically by birth, a Jewish person gets it at the very moment when he lands on Israeli earth. He even has the chance of further consideration for a number of months as to whether he accepts it or not. After this period the citizenship is obligatory but he can-in certain cases-quite easily get rid of it if he wants to within a further period of 2-3 years. There is also a status of "in between" which is called "Temporary Residence Al" which is provided only to Jews who come "to taste" Israeli life with an intention to stay as immigrants later on. During this period of three years they get all the privileges of a "new immigrant", including easy housing, grants, Hebrew course, cheap loans, tax-free purchases (very important in Israel where taxes are high on everything! ) When the person becomes actually an immigrant he still has the right for shorter military service. The status of TRA1 is not obligatory, and after three years one may leave Israel after having pleasure in it, maybe leaving a cheaply purchased estate for further good income when he is abroad.

At the same time "ordinary" Israelis, both Jews and Arabs have to work hard for their living making tremendous endeavours to get housing, serving full term military service (among the Arabs only the Druze serve, according to a special arrangement, which is an issue in itself, there being many draft-resisters among them, for nationalistic reasons), and being covered by the financial obligations of loans and mortgages. The Arab citizens in Israel are actually regarded as second class citizens in all senses, by the Government, and by most of the population that bases its attitude on Governmental propaganda and indoctrination. The existing restrictions are based on the "security situation" which seem to be endless (why? a separate political issue) and officially aimed at protecting the population. The Arabs cannot organise only-Arab organisations while most of the organisations in Israel are only-Jewish; people who are active in certain parties (i.e. leftist) or groups are detained without trials for long terms.

However, the basic attitude of discrimination is not touching only non-Jews in the secular religious State of Israel. The "Law on the Marriage & Divorce of Jews" excludes the possibility of a legal bi-national" or "bi-religious" marriage, entitling as legal only the religious ceremony. According to that the Jewish religious law is in power over the Marital Status as well as over the determining of "who is Jewish", which is obligatory by birth and unconvertible. This last indeed has an amendment by a quite recent law that makes it possible to be considered as

a Jew for the law of return, (see above-automatic citizenship ) also for a person whose father was Jewish (according to religious law the religion of a child goes after the mother ) and also legislates the rights of the non-Jewish partner in a "mixed couple". For the sake of immigration (which is a further discrimination against Arabs) another amendment enables the civil divorce (only divorce !) of a "mixed-couple" when the Jewish court won't deal with it, depending on the religious court, not on the -will of the partners.

To complete the picture, some more facts. Arabs have special identification numbers while holding an identification card is obligatory from 17 and preferable from 16; one can know the nationality of the owner according to the car-number; even an Arab millionaire cannot invest in a newly built, Jewish town (Karmi'el) in spite of the fact that the lands of his village were confiscated for that town "for development of the area" reasons. . . concluding "development" means "Judaization"- a fact formally confessed and accepted by the authorities.

This is a brief survey of the citizenship and nationality in Israel, which only hints at the actual basic problem of discrimination from the point of view of the legal and formal status of it, which concentrates on the registration of nationality and religion of an Israeli inhabitant. This registration as an actual and symbolic factor, was attacked non-violently and on a legal basis by my own family's project, the correspondence on which is gathered in a collection called "the Red Book", "because the paper got red for shame. . . "My wife and myself couldn't let ourselves be married by religious ceremony, not being believers of any existing and formal sect or religion (although born to Jewish parents who tried to raise us as Jewish but failed), therefore we just started to live together and later on made an agreement by a friend who was a lawyer. This document was not accepted as a basis for the

registration of our marriage. We tried to gain our right for the recognition of our marriage by the removal of the registration of nationality and religion, which was stated "Jewish" by our parents when we immigrated as children to Israel. After a long-years' correspondence the authorities agreed to cross out our religion but left the nationality. Since the nationality and religion distinction in Jewry is a complicated and complex one, and the law dealing with it is intentionally not clear whether it means nationality or religion, we still couldn't use this, although logically a person who has no religion cannot be married by religious clerks (rabbis).

After our two daughters were born, they and myself claimed at the High Court of Justice automatically for the cancellation of our registry of nationality ( after the religion was not registered for the girls). The registration without nationality was granted to the girls but I was sent to a lower authority. The district Judge failed to state that I was not a Jew considering the registration as an unharmful statistical factor, and since I speak Hebrew, he found that I needed Hebrew, i.e. Jewish education, for my children, for instance. An appeal to the High Court was submitted, having to date, two sessions already. At the first session one of the judges expressed openly and loudly his surprise at the practice of registration saying: "What a procedure, his mother had the right to state his status; he had the right to state his daughters' status; but he does not have the right to determine his own".      

Another attempt to show the ridiculous form of the actual and legal status of our marriage was made by the request on my wife's behalf to be registered in my family name. The judgement of the High Court of Justice was that changing her name would be "disrupting social order", because people would think we were formally married, but nevertheless she can use my name freely in everyday life, only not in formal actions.

Judgement on the case has now been made stating two principal rights that the Israeli citizen might enjoy, as follows:-

One is the right of self-determination. The judges stated that it was absurd that the authorities should dis-allow the self-determination of a father who was granted the right to determine the (non-)nationality of his daughters. Contrary to the district judge, they said that there is no difference between religion and nationality from the viewpoint of self-determination - both are based on the faith and belief of the person and "if someone wants to be a world-citizen he should be granted the right to be registered without nationality and religion". They warned, however, that such a change in status should be done carefully, checking the sincerity and keeness of the person.

The second principle touches the rights of growing children and states that the decisions of parents regarding the beliefs of their children are not of such a nature that they cannot be changed when they become adult, "the registration made by the parents is not binding on their children for the whole of their lives".

The judgement was widely published in Israel by the local press and papers as well as in papers across the world.