The logic behind this article is so flawed that the article doesn't warrant a detailed critique. I do want to make a couple of comments however:
1. Gideon Levy is confusing the idea of religiosity and that of a theocracy. Even if 100% of the Israeli (Jewish) population was religious (in whatever sense), this still does not imply or require that Israel be a theocracy. Neither is a necessary precondition for the other. While I stipulate that Israel has too many theocratic features to qualify as a true democracy, it doesn't have to be this way. Stripping out the theocratic baggage from the Israeli system will not prevent or even affect anyone's religiosity.
2. "Only 44 percent of Israelis define themselves as secular, as opposed to 64 percent of Swedes who define themselves as atheists..." Secular has more to do with requiring a separation between religion and state than with religious beliefs as such. A secularist and an atheist are not one and the same. Someone who is religious (or observant, to use Orthodox terminoloy) can still be secular, i.e. favour a separation between religion and state.
3. Israel is something of an aberration regarding the Jewish attitude to secularism. Everywhere in the Diaspora, Jews tend to favour countries and political parties which oppose theocratic trends. Only in Israel are they neutral, in favour of (or at least not strongly opposed to) theocratic ideals. This simply demonstrates that the much-vaunted Jewish attachment to justice and equality has more to do with circumstances and less to do with an innate drive for prophetic values.
21 December 2009
Religion, secularism and theocracy
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