Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
benjamin netanyahu

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on Monday said Israel is “a state of Jewish people” but “not a state of all its citizens”, while referring to the nation’s Palestinian Arab population, stating all citizens, including Arab, had all equal rights.

According to Al-Jazeera news reports, Netanyahu’s comment comes in response to criticism from Rotem Sela, an Israeli actor, where he referred to a deeply controversial law which passed last year declaring the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In response to criticism from Sela, Netanyahu said, “Israel is not a state of all its citizens,” adding, “According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and only it.”

The law passed last summer had downgraded the Arabic language from an official language to a language with a “special status”, making “Hebrew” the only left official language of Israel, and stipulated “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”.

It has also asserted that an undivided Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Sela had posted her criticism on Instagram of an interview with the right-wing culture minister Miri Regev.

Sela wrote: “When will anyone in this government tell the public that this is a country of all its citizens, and all people are born equal.  He added: “Arabs are also human beings. And also the Druze, and the gays, and the lesbians and… gasp… leftists.”

Netanyahu had called Israel a “Jewish, democratic state” with equal rights, but “the nation-state not of all its citizens but only of the Jewish people”.

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