9 - Political Liberalism in a Jewish and Democratic State

Summary

The chapter claims that Political Liberalism (PL) is unsuitable to the Israeli situation. PL envisions a liberal constitutional structure that protects the rights of free and equal citizens and serves as an ideational basis for a reasonable overlapping consensus. My internal critique of PL is that its loose definition of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, together with the ideas of overlapping consensus, impartiality and public reason, curtail PL’s ability to maintain a liberal constitutional structure that adequately protects rights. Essentially, PL’s reliance on the willingness of illiberal groups to embrace it renders it ineffective where such groups wield a more than negligible political power. Israel is such a setting. A second reason for PL’s unsuitability for Israel is that Israel’s constitutional structure includes fundamental deviations from liberal constitutional principles, both in the area of religion–state relations and in the area of ethnic (Jewish–Arab) relations. Consequently, application of PL in Israel must be preceded by a fundamental change in Israel’s constitutional structure. Otherwise the application of a form of PL adjusted to its current constitutional structure would result in the continued violation of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and of women, and lead to the instability of Israeli democracy.