"With this law Israel buys an exit ticket from the family of nations," wrote Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea last week in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. "The proposed loyalty law . . . is really racist. It obliges non-Jews to declare that they would be loyal to the Jewish state but exempts Jews from this obligation."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposed new law is not racist — just shortsighted and nasty. It is really about foreign policy. Netanyahu has also just demanded that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state."
Back in 1977, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said exactly the opposite: "We do not (demand that) our right to exist in the land of our fathers be recognized. It is a different recognition which is required between us and our neighbors. . . . Recognition of sovereignty and of the mutual need for a life of peace and understanding."