A state defined by religion or ethnicity is illegitimate. A Jewish state is racist by definition.

The fuller answer

Held sincerely, this is the strongest objection on the list, and it deserves better than it usually gets. It says nothing about Jews. It is a claim about what any state is permitted to be. The person making it thinks they are defending a principle you hold too.

Which is why you can have this argument on a train, with no expertise and nobody’s blessing. You are not being asked to know international law. You are being asked whether the principle is real.

Know which of three arguments you are in, because they are not the same and the answers do not swap. Whether opposing Zionism is ordinary politics is a separate entry. Whether Jews need a state at all is another. This one is narrower and harder. It says no state may be constituted on a people, so the question of need never arises.

Two things in one sentence, and everything turns on keeping them there

Israeli constitutional law puts national character and equal citizenship in a single phrase. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, passed in 1992, states its own purpose. It is to protect human dignity and liberty “in order to embed the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”.

Not a truce between two things pulling apart. One clause.

The Declaration of 1948 did it in one sentence too. The state “will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles”, and it “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”.

Character on one side. Citizenship on the other.

Almost every version of this argument is somebody collapsing the two, and the work in the room is pulling them apart and keeping them apart. A state can have a language, a flag, a calendar and an immigration policy shaped by one people. It can still owe every citizen the same law. Most of the map works exactly like that, and nobody thought it needed a name until this one.

Hand them the list, once

A principle costs something somewhere else. Find out where this one has cost anything.

• Denmark. Section 4 of the constitution: “The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, and, as such, it shall be supported by the State.” Section 6 requires the monarch to belong to it.
• Greece. Article 3: “The prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ.” The president swears in the name of the Trinity. Article 16 lists the development of religious consciousness among the aims of state education.
• Ireland. Article 2: the nation “cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.” Article 8 makes Irish the first official language of a country where almost everybody speaks English.
• Poland. Article 52(5): “Anyone whose Polish origin has been confirmed in accordance with statute may settle permanently in Poland.” A right of entry, in a constitution, allocated by descent.
• The United Kingdom. Twenty-six Church of England bishops sit in the upper house of the legislature as of right, a number fixed since 1847.

Five liberal democracies. Not one of them is asked to justify its existence as the price of being discussed.

Then say out loud what you are doing with the list, because a row of countries produced without explanation sounds like a dodge.

“I’m not trying to catch you out. I want to know what we’re arguing about. Have you ever objected to any of those?”

If they object to all of it, you now have an honest argument about liberal political theory, and you can have it. Serious people hold that view. It applies everywhere, it costs its holder something, and it is a position rather than a verdict.

If they had never thought about Denmark, this was never an argument about states.

Where this backfires, and it will if you overuse it. Recited as a list, it is whataboutery, the accusation will stick, and it will have earned it. The entry on singling out sets out why. One comparator, one question, then back to defending the arrangement itself. The list is a diagnostic. It is not the case.

The state being proposed beside it

Hardly anybody in this argument knows the next paragraph, on either side. The cheap version of it loses the room, so handle it carefully.

The Palestinian Authority’s Basic Law, as amended in 2003, is in force. Article 4: “Islam is the official religion in Palestine… The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation. Arabic shall be the official language.” The permanent constitution drafted in 2003, never adopted, said the same. It added that the Palestinian people are “part of the Arab and Islamic nations”.

Now the move, and it is not “so you’re a hypocrite”. That sentence wins nothing and insults the person in front of you. Worse, it concedes that a state with a national character is something needing an excuse.

The move is this. Two states is the settled position of nearly every government and campaigning organisation in this dispute, including most people making the objection. It is two states, each constituted on a people. So if states defined by a people or a faith are illegitimate as a category, the outcome they campaign for is illegitimate too. They have not noticed.

“Two states is your position and mine. Both of them are national states, and one puts sharia in its constitution. Does the principle take out both, or is it only ever pointed at one?”

That asks about their plan, not their character. It is answerable. Let them answer it.

Three concessions, and the fourth nobody expects

Lead with these before anybody produces them. Each is true, and each is stronger in your mouth than theirs.

The Nation-State Law of 2018. Say what it contains. Clause 1(c): “The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.” Clause 4 makes Hebrew the language of the state and gives Arabic a “special status”. On Adalah’s reading, Arabic had been a second official language before that. Clause 7 makes the development of Jewish settlement a national value. Equality is not in the text anywhere.

Say the rest, which is also true. Clause 4(c) preserves the status Arabic held in practice beforehand, and clause 10 gives non-Jews the right to keep their own days of rest. Then say what happened next, because it is the whole point. Eleven Supreme Court justices heard the challenge in July 2021 and upheld the law ten to one, Justice George Karra dissenting. President Hayut wrote that it would have been better had equality been explicitly enshrined. Its omission, she held, “ultimately does not detract from its status and importance as a fundamental principle”.

The Law of Return. Section 1: “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.” Since 1970 that runs to the child, grandchild and spouse of a Jew. It is a descent-based immigration right and there is nothing to be gained by dressing it up. Poland’s is in the constitution.

Family unification, which is the hard one. A temporary order first passed in 2003 bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who marry Israeli citizens from acquiring status as of right. It lapsed in July 2021 and was re-enacted in March 2022, and the Knesset has extended it since. Around 12,700 people live in Israel on documents needing constant renewal. The burden falls almost entirely on Arab citizens. This is what defeats your own Denmark comparison, so say it before they do: an established church does not reach into a marriage.

And the fourth. Israel has no civil marriage. Marriage and divorce run through the religious courts of each recognised community, an Ottoman arrangement kept by the British and then kept by Israel. Israeli Jews fly to Cyprus to get round it. Israeli Muslims marry in sharia courts.

Now the turn that makes all four worth saying.

Every one is being fought over inside Israel, in Israeli courts, largely by Palestinian citizens of Israel. Adalah publishes a database of more than sixty-five laws it says discriminate, and litigates against them in the state’s own courts. Sometimes it wins. In March 2000 the Supreme Court held that the state could not allocate land for a village admitting Jews only. Equality, the president of that court wrote, is a foundational principle of the State of Israel. Refusing the Ka’adan family on grounds of nationality was unlawful discrimination.

That is what a state with a national character and equal citizenship looks like from the inside. A running argument, brought by the minority, in the majority’s own institutions, with real wins in it.

“Everything you’ve listed is being fought in Israeli courts by Arab citizens, and some of it has been struck down. That’s not a people with no standing. It’s an argument, and I’d rather join it than end the country.”

The lines

“Jewish and democratic is one phrase in Israeli law, not two things at war. Which word are you objecting to?”

“Denmark has an established church and a Lutheran monarch by law. Have you ever raised it? I want to know whether this is a principle or a position.”

“Poland’s constitution lets anyone of confirmed Polish descent settle there. The Law of Return isn’t a category of one.”

“Two states, and one of them puts sharia in its constitution. Does your principle dissolve both?”

“Name the thing you’d change. If it’s the Nation-State Law or the family unification order, Israelis are suing over both and I’ll argue it with you. If it’s the state, say that instead.”

Learn one comparator properly

One country, one document, known well enough to say without hedging. Two is worse than one badly used.

Action. “On Thursday evening before I make the tea, I’ll read Article 3 of the Greek constitution and Section 4 of the Danish one, and write both on a card until either comes out in ten seconds.”

Coping. “If somebody calls it whataboutery, I’ll agree that a list of countries settles nothing, drop the list, and go back to the two halves. Then I’ll ask which half they say Israel fails, the national character or the equal citizenship.”