How I Stopped Being a Jew

How I Stopped Being a Jew, Shlomo Sand, SOAS University of London

"I'm living in the Israeli state. I'm living in Telavive, most of my life. Now – Israel defines itself as a Jewish state –, I'm living in a Jewish state that a quarter of the population are not defined as Jews, by the minister of the interior... 20% of Arab Israelians, I'm not speaking about the occupied territories, I'm speaking about citizens in the state of Israel; 5% of emigrants dissident from East Europe who were not from Jewish mothers, together [they are] 25% of the population of Israel [...], not considered Jews. But Israel defines itself as a Jewish state... And most of the Jewish in the world accept it. And most of the establishment (Jewish) communities in the world, not only accept it, are very, very happy with it.

Imagine that tomorrow, Britain decides to define itself as an English state, or a Christian English state. How long will it exist, your kingdom? Great Britain? How long? If it defines itself, not as a state, a kingdom of all the British but only of the English. How would the Scotts feel? How would the Welsh feel? How would the children of the emigrants that became British citizens feel? They would feel like Arab israelis are feeling in Israel. They are living, walking, dying in a state that considers itself the state of Woody Allen, not of them. [...] Continuing to be a Jew, today, in Israel, is immoral, because a Jew in the state of Israel is a privileged citizen. And I don't speak about the occupied territories... 47 years... A population without any political or civic rights. [...] If I define myself as a Jew, because of the past, because of the memory... in some way the nazis won. Why? Because they consider the Jews as an essentialist figure in History."

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