Jewish leader: Israel should not be state for Jews

Avraham Burg

TEL AVIV – A former Knesset member, international leftist Jewish leader and senior activist of Israel's "peace camp," which seeks Israeli retreats from strategic territory, wants Israel to cease being a Jewish state and encourages all Israelis to obtain foreign passports.

"To define the state of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite," said Avraham Burg, an activist in the "Peace Now" movement and a former Knesset member from Israel's leftist Labor party.

Burg, speaking to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, also served as chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, both of which are major Jewish organizations.

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The leftist Israeli leader said Israel should learn from the assimilation and inter-marriage of Jews in the U.S., where Jewish individuals marrying non-Jews has become a major phenomenon.

"Just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry, in America, too, they created the potential for something astonishing. They created a situation in which the goy (non-Jew) can be my father and my mother and my son and my partner," Burg said.

"The goy (in America) is not hostile but embracing. And as a result, what emerges is a Jewish experience of integration, not separation."

Burg criticized what he called Israelis' "closed conception" of religion, which he stated is "orthodox, not humanist and not universal." He said other alternatives to Judaism must be offered.

Burg went on to call for the abrogation of Israel's Law of Return, which allows all Jews seeking sanctuary in Israel to become citizens. The law helped Jews facing persecution in countries such as Germany, Russia and Yemen.

Burg compared the Law of Return, which singles out Jews, to rule under Nazi Germany.

"The Law of Return is an apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity."

Burg then compelled Israelis to follow in his footsteps and obtain foreign passports. Burg left Israeli politics in 2004 and now is a citizen of France. He is still active as a leader in Israel's peace camp, which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state and Israeli evacuations of the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

Israel retreated from Gaza in 2005. Since then, Hamas took over Gaza and rockets have been regularly fired from the territory into nearby Jewish population centers.

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The Golan Heights is strategic mountainous territory bordering Syria and Lebanon and looking down on Israeli population centers. The Heights was twice used by Damascus to launch invasions into the Jewish state.

The West Bank borders Jerusalem and is within rocket range of Tel Aviv and Israel's international airport.

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