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Donate your gently used books and media at this drive-thru and drop-off location: facebook.com/BookstockMI @BookstockMI Tweet with us using #BookstockMI THE D E LTA K A P PA G A M M A S O C I E T Y I N T E R N A T I O N A L F O R K E Y W O M E N E D U C AT O R S Remember To Shop Our Sale May 15-22, 2016 Laurel Park Place, Livonia For further information regarding donations: www.bookstock.info 248-645-7840 ext. 365 Sunday, January 24, 2016 11 am - 1 pm Jewish Community Center Loading Dock, West Bloomfield 2018250 'HWURLW %ORRPILHOG+LOOV www.dittrichfurs.com In-Store Speedy Credit — Everyone Qualifies Parking Lots Adjoining Now thru Sunday in Detroit )XUV HG HO>K L:O> NI MH :G= FHK> )XUV HG HO>K L:O> NI MH :G= FHK> 2063300 10 January 21 • 2016 I sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. Defiant leadership among Palestinian Arabs notwithstanding, he's overlooking that Israel already is a Jewish state by self-determination and international declaration. Believing Palestinian defiance could jeopardize Israel's international stand- ing, Netanyahu is renewing a push for legislative enshrinement of Israel as a Jewish state. The JN has never favored the bill. A nationality law, singularly, would hardly convince the Arab world to summarily view Israel through the lens of a Jewish state. Affirming Israel's right to brand itself a Jewish state are the U.N. General Assembly's 1947 Israeli statehood declaration and the 1948 Proclamation of Independence drawn up by Israel's People's Council, which held internationally recognized gov- erning authority as Zionism honed a desire into reality. OPEN APPEAL Netanyahu makes the case that Palestinian defiance is rooted in an unwillingness to cross "the emotional bridge of giving up the dream of not a state next to Israel, but of a state instead of Israel." That deduction, shared in a Dec. 6 video address at the Saban Forum in Washington before Israeli and U.S. leaders, is reasonable given Palestinian intransigence toward revived peace talks with Israel. Netanyahu took advantage of that public spotlight to deny Israel intends to annex the West Bank — much like it did the Golan Heights in 1980 fol- lowing their seizure in the Six-Day War of 1967. Of course, annexing the West Bank, a large slice of which the Palestinians envision being in a Palestinian state, would mean the dreaded one-state answer to a decades- long political and cultural conflict. The JN doesn't waver in support of two states for two peoples, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, standing side by side, in peace — despite lingering tangled parameters of such a scenario. Israel is America's closest Middle East ally and the beleaguered region's only democracy with Western values for all citizens. The ancestral home- land of the Jewish people is not about to lose its Jewish character or diminish its cross-cultural freedoms. BELOW SURFACE The contentious bid for a nation-state law sounds plausible — a constitution- al-like mandate to secure Israel's status as a Jewish state and deter future Israeli governments from diluting Israel's Jewish soul. But a nation-state law not only is superfluous, it also could erode Israel's democratic makeup and attenuate Israel's Arab minority. Israel has no constitution and its politics would never allow one. Above all laws are 11 Basic Laws that serve as a constitutional-like guide for Israel's legal system. Time directed toward debating a nation-state law could better be spent on: assuring Israel's Arab minority is receiving all the individual liberties it is entitled to; advancing the religious rights of non-Orthodox Jews; and reining in government-backed prac- tices that discriminate against women by invoking religious tradition. The Netanyahu governing coalition also must confront the boiling tension among Arabs over Israel's West Bank settlements. The Palestinians acknowledged Israel's Jewish character when they bought into the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. But they've resisted reas- serting that acknowledgment in the wake of the two terrorist uprisings that followed. Even as they refuse to recognize the validity of the Jewish national state, the Palestinians hypocritically press on with seeking their own state outside the strictures of formal bilateral nego- tiations with Israel. * editorial No Need For A Jewish Nation-State Law Israel's annexing of the West Bank would mean the dreaded one-state answer to a decades-long political and cultural conflict. viewpoints » S e n d l e t t e r s t o : l e t t e r s @ t h e j e w i s h n e w s . c o m