Adalah heads to Supreme Court to battle Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law
Israeli Supreme Court hearing on petitions against law is slated to kick off Tuesday morning at 9 AM; Adalah: The law’s distinct apartheid characteristics guarantee Israel’s ethnic-religious character as exclusively Jewish, while anchoring discrimination and racism against Palestinian citizens.
An expanded panel of 11 Israeli Supreme Court justices is slated to convene in Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, 22 December 2020, at 9 AM (GMT +2), for hearings on a series of 15 petitions filed against Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law.
CLICK HERE to read this press release on Adalah’s website
On 19 July 2018, the Israeli Knesset voted 62 to 55 to approve the Jewish Nation-State Law that constitutionally enshrines Jewish supremacy and the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed a Supreme Court petition against the Jewish Nation-State Law less than a month later, on 7 August 2018.
Palestinian members of Knesset protesting Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law on the day of voting in 2018. (Screengrab: Knesset Channel courtesy of Adalah)
The petition was submitted against the Knesset on behalf of the entire Arab political leadership in Israel: the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the National Committee of Arab Mayors, the Joint List parliamentary faction, and in the name of Adalah.
CLICK HERE for Adalah’s special web page on Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law
Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law – which has distinct apartheid characteristics – guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion, racism, and systemic inequality.
Adalah’s petition stresses that “a law that denies the civil and national rights of Palestinians in their homeland is racist, colonialist, and illegitimate.”
In 2018, the Israeli parliament approved the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law that enshrines Jewish supremacy over Palestinian citizens. The law has distinct apartheid characteristics and requires racist acts as a constitutional value.
The Israeli Knesset voted on 19 July 2018 by a margin of 62 to 55 to approve the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, constitutionally enshrining Jewish supremacy and the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
This law – which has distinct apartheid characteristics – guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion, racism, and systemic inequality.
Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law is the “law of laws”, capable of overriding any ordinary legislation. It alters the constitutional framework of the state, making changes that violate established international norms: there is no democratic constitution in the world that designates the constitutional identity of the state on racial grounds, as serving one ethnic group.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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