Welcome, good afternoon and welcome everybody. I'm honoured and delighted and an all out joy to present to you, Speaker today, Professor Mr. Ekurhuleni, who is the Bruce Wayne Professor of international law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Professor Ghanians research interests are in private international law and inter-religious law, multiculturalism and civil procedure.
Amongst his publications are the book Conflict in Conflict A Conflict of Law Case Study of Israel in the Palestinian Territories came out with Oxford University Press in 2014, and the book that is the centre of the Talk Today a multicultural entrapment religion and state amongst the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, came out with Cambridge University Press last year. Professor Galloway only received his LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is S.J. D from the University of Pennsylvania.
Thank you for coming. Well, thank you for having me. And it's a delight to be here. And and so the topic is, is about religion and state in Israel, but it's about religion and state in Israel, from a different angle, from the angle that we have been used to. So far, it looks at. The conflict from the prism of multiculturalism. You have different religious communities that are recognised.
Each of these religious communities would have a court system that would be applying a religious law to the members. It's a continuation of the Ottoman military system that existed in the Middle East for centuries, and it still exists in the Middle East today. But something happened with the millet system as it evolved throughout the years. It's been sustained in different countries and at different times for different reasons, even though it's it's actually basically the same system.
I wouldn't be saying it's exactly the same system, but the concept of having your religious law govern your marriage and divorce and sometimes other matters of personal status. Right. This this concept is something that that originated in the Ottoman millet system and actually also existed before that.
But I won't go into history. And when I look at this system and what I did in the book is is to look at it from the perspective of multiculturalism that has evolved and political theory since the early 1990s and has become a major normative theory in political science, but also in our legal real and in multiculturalism. There is one basic dilemma and this is what I connect to the existing military system, at least in Israel, with multiculturalism.
And the dilemma is is, is this you come from a perspective of liberalism and democracy and you want to accommodate minorities in a certain polity. And that minority happened to be subordinated in given the Hagee money of the majority and the state structure. And that minority would perceive its culture, its identity as vital for individuals that are within that minority itself.
And if you want to protect these individuals, the conception is you should be protecting the culture, the minority, the group as well and welcome, who also went to this to this university would be arguing my individual autonomy is is something that is determined by my cultural identity, by my holistic cultural identity and my options of making choices is something that would be governed by my culture. So if you want to protect my individual autonomy, you should be protecting my group identity.
Otherwise, that group identity would be lost, and if that would happen, then I, as an individual would be losing my own autonomy. That's that's the conception generally. But once this idea has developed, a problem came up and the problem was, well, you're accommodating. It grew up from liberalism and democracy, but that group, in its internal handling and its internal norms happened to be illiberal would be subjecting individuals that happened to belong to illiberal mobs.
And the two groups that were singled out in the discussion generally happen to be women and children. And that is especially true when it comes to the recognition of religion as being the subject of accommodation. So if we assume and we can go into details, but generally if if religion is as patriarchal and you would be protecting that religion, then it would be inevitable that that group would be discriminating against women that happened to be members of that group since religious norms,
when they are applied to two two individuals. They're not applied equally to men and women. Religion, would it treat differently woman from from men? And it can go also against what we perceive as the best interest of child, of the child when when we regard what this religious practise would entail. So corporal punishment is something that a religious norm would consider to be OK. OK, but according to our modern conception of liberalism, we say that's that's not OK in terms of liberalism.
Children should go to school until a certain age and. We mandate education. But then the Supreme Court of the US would come out saying that the Amish can't take their children out of school at the age of 14. It's a very famous American case. It's called Yoda, about about the Amish. So you want to accommodate that group, but then you're undermining some of the rights that we conceive as being essential in terms of liberalism and the best interests of children or the equal treatment of a woman.
So religion can be very discriminatory against women, and that goes across all religions. And when you have a jurisdictional authority that is mandated by law and it happens to be in matters of marriage and divorce, exclusive meaning that you don't have a civil option, you can't really exit and then you can see the predicament that you're accommodating this religious group.
On the one hand, because of that, preserving the status and autonomy of that group as such, but that group would be undermining the rights of certain members. Now this this dilemma is it's very well noticed and discussed. There's tons of articles and books about what is conceived as being the minority within the minority problem or the internal minority problem.
Leslie Green, who was a professor of jurisprudence until lately, has written a very well known article on the topic of the minority within the minority. And Joseph Rass has also written on it. It's very well known. But what I tried to do in the book and in some of my work is let's look at this jurisdictional authority as it exists, especially in Israel, and see how this predicament this minority within the minority works out and in the context of a state that is a nation state,
a state in which I would be arguing. And as I did in the book, as an official state religion that is a recognised statutorily and by different fundings and standing like no other religion and in Israel itself, and that it has no majority religions that that happened to compose about 20 percent of the population. And this non-Jewish religious minority have individuals that happen to be subject to the internal handling and norms of their respective religious community.
What happens that when we we look at this situation, the circumstance through the prism of multiculturalism, what is exactly the predicament of of these individuals when they exist in a context which is not that western democratic context in which this predicament this in terms of minority or minority within the minority problem has been discussed bog by the different political theorists.
So I took my case in Israel as being my case study, and I will be arguing that the predicament in Israel itself for the Palestinian Arab minority that is subject to its own religious norms happens to be acute in nature. It's much more severe than it exists in western democratic cultures.
That's one. And second, I would be trying to argue that it might look multicultural, but actually, it is not multicultural because it doesn't serve the justifications of multiculturalism as we usually perceive them as such. And to make a long story short, if we think of multiculturalism as protecting the minority from the Hagee of the majority because otherwise the minority culture would vanish in the State of Israel.
My argument is when it comes to the religion, the state itself is interested in maintaining the religious divides. It's not threatening the identity of the non-Jewish religious minorities when it comes to their religious identity. It might be threatening when it comes to the national identity of the. Syrian Arabs, but when it comes to the religious identity to preserve the Jewish character of the state, there is an interest in preserving the other religious characters that also exist.
So if you ask Anaesthesiologist in Israel when it comes to the identity and the formation of identity in the State of Israel, it's a mum, a stimulative state. Nobody is is is trying to assimilate me as a Palestinian to become Jewish and Judaism is is not a proselytising religion anyway to become Jewish. It can be extremely hard, according to the Orthodox ritual. Nobody is threatening religious identities and national identity of the Palestinian is flattered, but not the religious identity.
So why are you protecting my religious identity? It's not out of multiculturalism. It's out of something cuffs. But then so this is this is this is the argument just to give you a kind of a road map where I will be taking you in my discussion. So let's start with religion and state in Israel. OK. When you when you look at the major treaties on constitutional law and this is very representative, as is all of the discussion on religion and state in Israel, it's Jewish centred.
It does not deal with the non-Jewish religious minorities. It is. It is. It is centred on issues that happen to deal with the conflict generally between the recognition of the Jewish religious norms and institutions on the one hand and democratic liberal ideals, on the other hand. So if you look at Barak Medina and Iona Rubinstein is at the subject index at the end, you would see this country, religion and state see Jewish state, and that's very puzzling.
But it's it's it's no exception when you and I think for the book, I've read almost every article on religion and state in the country, and you look at the different pieces on the religion and state, just notice the title. It happens to be egalitarian, general religion and state. The case for interaction. You look at the at the substance of the article, it's it's Jewish centre and there is no reference at all to the issue of the minorities. You look state and religion, you'd find the same thing.
You look at religion and politics like Charles Libman, and there is a donia of they've written extensively on politics and religion. You look into their writings, it's it's Jewish, centred as well. And some people would call it outright that synagogue and state. Actually, this is the discussion on the lines of of a church and state. Now I'm not saying that there is no discussion of religious minorities in Israel. There is there's a lot of books and articles on the Muslims.
And in Israel there's a lot of work on the issue of Christians in Israel and the Druze. Several wrote a book or other on the Christians, the cross on the star of David, you would call it, and the Muslims. There are a number of books, but all of this discussion is on the specific religious group, but not within the general discussion on religion and state. And there is a discussion about the Arab minority and its status in the State of Israel.
But then it takes up mostly the issue of that minority as one national group that has some religious identity and even more today than it was than it had in the past, but anyway, not within the general discussion on religion and state.
But you look at the discussion on religion and state in the U.S. you'd find it very much attuned to issues of minorities, whether the issue of the Amish, the Mormons and polygamy, Seventh Day Adventists and the Sabbath, or chewing peyote in a Native American church. You look at Europe, you'd find minority religions very much present, right?
Whether the veil in France, whether the burqa, whether the sector born here in the UK, can you be excused from having wearing the helmet if you're riding a motorcycle and you happen to be Sikh, right? A kosher and halal slaughter of animals all throughout Europe? I mean, this is definitive of much of the religion and state discussion in many other places. Well, it's not in the Israeli case, not only it, it's not, but it's it's totally excluded.
So that got me going thinking what might be the explanation? OK, so we Berenson, who was a Supreme Court justice and wrote a piece in which he kind of explained it. And this is an explanation that I get. OK. That's v Berenson talking to us here, the screen, so he would be saying that. Well, it's not present because you're not challenging the religious jurisdiction of your courts as much as the Jewish members in Israel are challenging rabbinical jurisdiction.
You're very quiet. You're acquiescing to you're not generating these dilemmas that you would find within the Jewish community. So it's not picked up in the discussion because there is no activity. And if there is no activity, the radar would not be picking up anything. So that that that that is one explanation. With all due respect, I don't accept the explanation.
Once acquiescence is not something that is a qualification for regarding the issue of polygamy amongst the Mormons to be part of the American religion and state discussion. And I think if you go back 100 years ago or more when the Reynolds decision was discussed and you would ask the Mormons, Are they for the activity of polygamy or not? I guess most of them would say, yes. I mean, it's it's not a matter of I accept it or not.
Or if you would ask the Amish, are they for homeschooling of children? I guess most of them would say yes, and they would challenge unless if they are prosecuted, they would be challenging, not the internal restriction, but they would be challenging actually the prosecution itself. So acquiescence and we can go into this in detail haven't been a qualification for including or not. OK, if you ask most Jewish observant Europeans, are they for male circumcision or not?
I guess most of them would say yes, but this would not disqualify the issue of not being a matter of religion and state in Germany. OK. So but the most interesting cases that I surveyed, all of the Supreme Court decisions in Israel that happened to deal with religion and state issues and empirically, it is not true.
There has been a lot of challenges and discussion and controversies and dilemmas that ended up before the Israeli Supreme Court that did deal with issues of minority religions and mayhem is one of the first cases. Polygamy was criminalised in the law enacted in 1951, the woman's equal rights law. Until that law, polygamy was excused from criminal prosecution if it is allowed, according to the personal law of the people involved.
So under the mandate, a penal code, it was exempted if you happen to be Muslim, but in the equal woman's right, this exception was abolished. So it became a crime. And a Muslim man came before the Israeli Supreme Court are arguing it's an infringement on my freedom to practise my religion. And the Supreme Court of Israel denied the petition, and a religious Jewish justice actually wrote the decision. Moshe Zilber. He would be saying Islam does not instruct you to take more than one wife.
It gives you the option. So if I'm limiting an option, it's not like I'm denying you the practise of your religion. That's at least the explanation, but that's that did happen. Shady's is a case that happened to deal with the multiple Catholic community. It has a court structure in which the appellate court would be sitting in Beirut in Lebanon, and there was a litigation between two Malka Catholics inside of Israel, and the husband wanted to appeal that decision.
But then he found out he needs to go to Beirut to appeal. And he came before the Israeli Supreme Court saying, How can I go to Beirut? I mean, there is no crossing of the border. There is no diplomatic relations. How do you expect me to go and litigate my appeal and in Beirut? So should Israel recognise the jurisdiction of a court that is sitting in Lebanon over its own subjects, its own citizens?
And it did. The petition was rejected. We respect the autonomy of the community and therefore this is part of its hierarchy. And so this is what you have to do. And hello, this is the third case. Excuse me. It was a conflict between a Christian who opened a bar in Austria. It's a mixed Christian Druze village that sits up on Mount Carmel, and his licence of operating the bar was revoked because he was serving alcohol and playing what was deemed to be Western music.
And this was regarded as offensive to the Druze religious members of Syria. And he went to the Supreme Court arguing this denial or revocation of my licences is an infringement on my right, and it can't be allowed by Israeli administrative law. Sultan versus Sultan, it's it's an amazing decision. Sultan and Sultan were a couple from Humble Farm. She was divorced unilaterally by her husband, a divorce that is effective, but it's a criminal act, according to the same equal rights for women's law.
A unilateral divorce? It might be OK in terms of the religion, but it's a crime in terms of Israeli penal law. That's that's an anomaly. I know I can see your your face uncle, but it is an anomaly, but it is something that that that exists. So she brought a civil suit in torts against the husband. This is a statutory tort and and she wanted and she got compensation. I mean, the thing is, I can go on and on and and cite more and more cases in which the religion and state conflict did come up.
And actually, in my book, the whole first chapter is about slavery, all of these cases and these tensions. An interesting anomaly also exists with respect to the Christian courts that would be sitting in east Jerusalem, and they would be applying jurisdiction over Christian courts that would be sitting in the occupied territories of the West Bank, as well as in Jordan. Now East Jerusalem is regarded by Israel as part of its sovereign authority.
Now, the opening of an American consulate in east Jerusalem is a big issue because this is our sovereign territory and you can't have a consulate for the Americans operating in Jerusalem, for the Palestinians. It's it's united capital of Israel. So the Greek Orthodox appellate court would be sitting in east Jerusalem that is regarded by Israel as part of its sovereign territory,
but it would be operating under Jordanian law. What it is discussing appeals that would be coming from the West Bank and from Jordan. I mean, if if this is not religion and state, I don't know what it is, I mean, just imagine this happening in the US. A court sitting in the US that would be applying for a law. I mean, even citing Sharia or international law was a big issue, citing it, not applying it. And in the US, right here, it's operating under the authority of a foreign law.
So empirically, therefore, there are a lot of cases discussed. So I came up with the metrics that I think that does explain this exclusion of the minority religions from the religion and state discussion in Israel. And this is the metrics it builds on two variables. One is the public and the private, and the other is the coercive and the liberal, according to what I argue in the book. When it comes to Judaism in Israel, it's part of what I regard as Israel's public sphere.
It's part of its identity as a Jewish state. If there is legitimacy, justification for why there is recognition for Jewish religious norms and institutions, it's because of Israel as a Jewish state. Generally, OK, so if you take the Law of Return and the definition of who is a Jew, that has generated a lot of discussion and the definition is predominantly religious today, right? Then this goes to the identity.
There is no other law, I think in Israel, even with the Basic Law that defines Israel as a Jewish state more than the Law of Return. It is. It is the law of Israel as a Jewish state, and that definition is predominantly religious. Who is a Muslim, but who is a Christian? Is that a matter for the state? Does anybody care? I can't care less. You want to define yourself as a Muslim? Be my guest. You want to define yourself as a Catholic in Israel the way you want to.
I don't care if it's a religious, if it's a secular, if it's a subjective, I don't care. It's my business. It's your private. Recognising Jewish reform and conservative streams is very difficult and has generated a lot of discussion. OK. And still, today they suffer from a lot of discrimination, institutional discrimination from the demonic Orthodox frame of Judaism. But when it comes to the non-Jewish religious communities, it's almost like incorporating a private corporation of a sort.
So you have about, uh, let me see. Sorry, I don't have the list here. You have about 10 different Christian religious communities, some of which would would have only maybe 200 300 members like the Syrian Orthodox Group. It is recognised as a religion that Baha'is were recognised back in 1971, and I think there are maybe at best 100 or 150 Baha'is in the State of Israel, and the Evangelical Christian Church was also recognised in 1970.
It does exist. It has about 20 500 members or 3000 people at best. Look at the ease of how this recognition is accorded. But at the difficulty when it comes to reform and Conservative Judaism and this is the public and the private divide. So this is one explanation. The other variable is what would we be considering to be coercive as opposed to what we would be considering as being liberal in terms of the recognition itself?
When judged through the prism of liberalism and Democrat democracy, much of the recognition, at least rubberneck of jurisdiction over matters of family law is considered through that prism to be coercive, to be illiberal, to be undemocratic. I am going we would see would be deeming rabbinical jurisdiction as a bloc, Israel's democratic rule.
OK. Yeah. And that's why you see also secularism being obsessed with the issue of of rabbinical jurisdiction with authority of Jewish Everett Kadish with with Chief Rabbi Night with the religious councils. You know, it's it's it's very much present in there. It's because the trend is you perceive this to be coercive. And if secularism is about pushing away from religion, then it would be picking up these matters.
But when it comes to the Palestinian Arab religious community, when it comes to their own religious courts, the perception is that the recognition that is accorded is liberal. I would be saying multicultural. It's the Jewish state giving recognition to the non-Jewish religious communities, and that recognition is itself. A matter of toleration, it's a matter of pluralism. It's a matter of liberalism. It's a matter of multiculturalism.
OK, so. If if this is the matrix, at least from my perception, now I know why you don't mix the two issues in one discussion. It's like mixing oil and water. They don't mix because they are governed by different forces, by different definitions. You can't handle both in one. And when you discuss religion and state in Europe and in the U.S., what is always in the background is that how that recognition would affect the supposed neutrality, but the supposed non-establishment of religion.
My quest as a state to be more neutral instead of taking sides. So any recognition accorded to any of the religious norms and practises would be threatening or jeopardising that neutrality in Israel. It's not there because that recognition when it exists a it is restricted mostly to the Jewish religious communities. And if it exists to the non-Jewish religious community, it's minimal in comparison.
So it's not picked up because it's minimal, even though it might be significant in the eyes of a Western legal theorists. One issue I can bring up if you look up the Ministry of Religious Affairs and its website, OK, this is the official website of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Israel. OK. This is another sign of the public and the private. When it's speaking about itself, it is saying right to the Ministry of Religious Services provides religious services for the Jewish population.
Now, look at the title. It's the Ministry of Religious Services. It's supposed to be egalitarian, but it's almost natural that when we discuss the standing of an official portfolio of a ministry, it would be said explicitly that it is for the Jewish population. And the recognition that is accorded and it is handled by this ministry happened to do with a lot of religious services that are provided by by by law explicit laws. The Chief Rabbinate would have a law and they are Neame.
The religious operators that operate under the Chief Rabbinate would be getting salaries from the state. You'd have regional councils with the McVeighs, with all of the services, the kosher certification, it's all handled by law and provided for by by state funds. So you have an official report when at the end you compare the amount of money going to the religious institutions, the Israeli government. This is not a civil rights organisation. This is that this is the government itself.
In comparison with the funding of Jewish religious institutions, the modern Jewish communities are rather severely. That is not my word. It's the it's the government finding an official report to you and by severely under supported by the government. OK. And that's the the official status when when you look at Sarah Verhofstadt, who wrote what defines Israel as a Jewish state, he would be saying it's two and a half law.
The first law is the Law of Return. The second law is about the marriage and divorce laws. And then he would be speaking about Sabbath laws about, you know, Hillel flying on a Saturday or not restricting of transportation or not. OK, but when it is judged by by liberalism, as Haim Cohen, he would say that this is a blot on Israel's legal democracy. But when you look at how the same religious authority, when it is for the Palestinian Arab minorities, the narrative changes dramatically.
It takes an even an opposite course. So it's gone and I'm intentionally bringing words from Supreme Court justices. And it's how gone was even the president of the Israeli Supreme Court back in the early 1980s, when he would be speaking about the jurisdiction of the modern Jewish religious minorities. This is the text in Hebrew, and I have translated it. The impression is that the interpretation of expanding the jurisdiction of the non-Jewish.
So it's expanding because if I'm liberal, I should be expanding that jurisdiction, OK? His influence from the worry of not disturbing in in the eyes of and what in the eyes of a minority is considered to be part of their national and cultural autonomy. So it's not like we're just recognising we're even expanding and this is liberal and this is autonomy. OK, it's Huck Engelhardt, who was also professor of law at the Hebrew University and became a Supreme Court justice.
She would be speaking when discussing the issue of Muslim religious and Christian the non-Jewish. There is a shifting of concern from individual freedom of religion to collective autonomy. You can see how it is shifting to an issue of a collective identity. And it goes on and on. But I think the most relevant depth is this text that you can't understand it, at least from my point of view. Without the fifth, the thesis of I've just offered this.
This is a text from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published back in 1961, and the reader is very irrelevant to the discussion, at least in this in this place, because it's it's a it's a publication that was titled The Arabs in Israel and it took up religion. And it's it's it's some bragging about how Israel is treating its its Arab minority in different ways, and one way is its treatment of its religious establishment.
And this is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs speaking, and it would be stressing. In fact, the Muslim and Christian religious courts have jurisdictional powers exceeding those of rabbinical courts. It's bragging. It's taking pride. This is us. And in Israel, we're giving the Muslims and the Christians even a wider jurisdictional authority this state of religious judicial autonomy. Look at the wording continues to be maintained in Israel lately.
Indeed, it had been extending to the Druze community. We've recognised the mother, which was true in 1957. In 1962, there was a law and rules. Religious courts are now being established all at the same time. An entirely different process has been taking place where in other Arab countries in Egypt, for instance, the Sharia courts and the courts of the other religious communities were abolished in 1956 and their powers transferred to civil courts.
So it's condemning Egypt for abolishing religious jurisdiction while condemning because in 1961, the arch enemy of Israel was Egypt of Jamal Abdel Nasser. Look what we are doing in Israel. We're recognising we're even adding an Egypt that abolishing this is not meant to be praising Egypt. But the praise and the condemnation here is coming from this assumption. That recognition itself is tolerant, liberal and my recognition is, is that discriminatory?
And this comes from this perception that I'm trying now. You find the designation of this particular authority as being religious and multicultural in the writing of even recent publications. So Ilan Saban would be deeming this jurisdictional authority a group differentiated right. Kretschmer would be speaking of group rights. Zamir Now this happened to be liberal academics. It's not coming from a conservative viewpoint, but this is exactly the sentiment.
OK, now. And I think I'm right in my characterisation, then comes up the issue of individuals rights of members of these religious groups that happen to be minority groups. Now. Just to make us. The case even more clear. I happen to be a Supreme Court justice sitting on the Israeli Supreme Court, and I have two petitions coming before me to make it very simple. This is not the actual case, but to make the point clear.
One petition is by a Jewish woman trying to challenge the rabbinical jurisdiction, and I happen to be a liberal judge. I happen to be Haim Cohen sitting on the Supreme Court. OK? And I would be asking myself, What should I do? Where should I be tilting the scales for the petitioners and against the jurisdiction or for the jurisdiction and against the petitioner?
And I happen to be liberal. So probably if I would be deeming that jurisdictional authority to be blocked on Israel's democracy, I would be more for the woman against the jurisdictional authority. But I'm the same liberal judge and I conceive of OK, I conceive of of the religious jurisdiction of the Palestinian Arabs. As being liberal, and I have a petition against the Sharia court or against the Christian court, and I would be asking myself, how would my liberalism play out in this instance?
Would it be for the community or would it be for the individual? And it played out in a lot of cases for the community and against the individual. So if there is a predicament in terms of individuals that happened to be subject to that jurisdictional authority. Their predicament in Israel in terms of Palestinian Arabs that are subject to the religious jurisdiction of these different religious courts.
It's much more acute than the Jewish individual predicament, and that acuteness happened to also result from a number of other factors. One is there's a legitimacy deficit. What Israel meant with Shariah or canon law and try to fix it as much as it would feel free to do when it comes to Jewish rabbinical norms. And look at the Shah Bano case in India when the Indian court tried to mend with the Sharia. There was there was a lot of tension.
And given the tension in the background, I mean, there is a legitimacy deficit on part of state institutions to deal with mom, Jewish religious authority and that legitimacy deficit. Also, it's mutual individuals calling on Israeli government or even at the Knesset, calling on Israeli institutions to fix Sharia and Christian and rules norms. This is not who we should turn to in order to fix our internal.
So you have this deficit that exists, and this would make that predicament even worse because there is no incentive on both sides to fix what it is in existence. Look at the agouna case of amongst the Jews. There's a lot of talk about it. There were a lot of institutions established to take care of the status of the agouna amongst the Jewish community. But what about the Muslims? What about the Christians? There is no divorce amongst certain Christian communities.
Like you heard it here in England 100 or so ago or in Ireland, maybe 50 years ago, if you happen to be Catholic, that's it. There is no divorce. What are you going to call upon to fix it? Would the state be intervening in the name of the Catholic Church? But what about my I mean, this is the legitimacy deficit, OK, now a mother, I think a circumstance that make this predicament worse. As I said before, the state is interested in maintaining the different religious identity.
So if you're interested in maintaining the religious identities, why would you want to even change it? It is maintaining these identities, and it's self serving. The minority political establishment is also not arguing against it, even if it happens to be secular. Even the Communist Party amongst the Palestinian Arabs are not calling for the abolishment of this religious jurisdiction.
It's silent, almost. There is no active secular agenda against religious norms amongst the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. Why? Because even if I happen to be secular as a political representative, maybe the last thing I want to bring up now is this internal religious issue because it would be fragmenting me from within and diminishing my ability. To have the national struggle struggle as my main struggle in the state.
It would be cracking me from within, so why I would need to bring this up when I have a more serious agenda in my hands. So this makes it even worse. Now. I'll give you I guess I should stop at that one stage, but let me just say a couple of words about why I don't consider this to be a multicultural accommodation because this is the subject of the fifth chapter in the book because I think that for a group arrangement to become multicultural,
there needs to be some qualification factors. Not every group arrangement is something that would we? We would be deeming as being multicultural. OK. Because the context matter, because why that accommodation is granted is essential. So segregated America was based on group arrangement, but nobody is calling it a multicultural arrangement. You might have the same institutions that might be for the African American community today if you go to Howard University.
Yeah, it's predominantly African-American. Yeah, that might look today as being multicultural. So what's the difference? I mean, Howard University maybe existed just the same when there was segregation and today when there is no segregation. I think what is essential is that if recognition is accorded, it's accorded in order to protect that community, not to subordinate, not to maintain that identity, it's for its protection. That's why we conceive it as being essential.
But as I said in this. Who are you protecting Israel as a mom, as a multiple state? Why are you granting Muslims and Christians and Druze and recognising their religious identity and safeguarding that identity to the level of exclusive jurisdiction over matters of marriage and divorce? Why are you doing this? Nobody's threatening. Nobody's trying to assimilate. Second. What about proportionality sometimes? Yeah. There might be a measure of assistance, a measure of recognition.
But why go to the level of exclusive jurisdiction? You want to safeguard the interest. You can do it at a much lesser price, which is more proportional, maybe for the interest. OK, and what culture are you preserving for these individuals? So if I happen to be a Greek Orthodox Christian, you don't want the family car code that would be governing me and it is recognised. It's the Byzantine code of the church back in the 14th century.
Is this representing my culture? Is this part of my opponent? Is this determining my options of choices? Of course not. Why are you preserving it that? But I think the characterisation of this authority as being multicultural is self-serving for the state and for the political establishment of the minority, for the state, essentially boxing people into their religious identities. But Israel would want to brag about being democratic but democratic, and such boxing does not go together.
We don't think of boxing people into their religious identities as being democratic and liberal with no, you know, it's it's it's mandatory. This is the minister. How would you try even to make it appear as being multicultural as as being as being democratic? You, you label it, you consider it to be multicultural. We're recognising as the ministry was doing so, labelling is like laundering that reality and making it seem at least as something which is.
And I think this is also happening on behalf of the political establishment that of of of the minority itself. It's hinging on liberal ideals, of equality, of democracy, for state, for all its citizens. Fine. But how how does that is, how is that compatible with religious jurisdiction? Exclusive religious jurisdiction, so Palestinians and Jews want to be equal on a national level, but men and woman should not. Is that something that is compatible? It's not. It can't happen.
You can't be liberal to believe that Jews and Arabs should be equal, but men and women are not. But how would that be compatible? You also internalise the same vocabulary. This is our own autonomy, multiculturalism, and so there is this overlap of consensus, I guess. Of presenting it as. But it is not. And that's why the book is called an entrapment and this is how the American Entrapment defence operates.
I'm selling you something, but only to criminalise you afterwards, but I'm trying to make you believe that what you're doing is is good for me. But at the end, it's actually it's not good for you because I would be putting you in jail. So that's that's the entrapment, and I think this is what exists and this is the reality it's been. It's it's it's been. Imaged as being multicultural, but it does not qualify as being multicultural.
The qualifications don't apply here and if it's not, and though it's presented, OK, then it's an entrapment. But it's not an entrapment without a cost. It's an entrapment where you leave a lot of individuals subject subject to this religious authority in which their freedom and rights are undermined. In the last chapter, I go into the discussion of how we might be reforming this situation, but I guess I'll stop here and give you a chance to ask and hopefully to have a discussion. Thank you.