Elevating the significance of military service: Knesset members and republican values

ABSTRACT

Through an analysis of the Israeli case, this paper explains why states add superfluous provisions that facilitate naturalization processes after military service. The Israeli Citizenship Law states that military service in Israel will confer exemptions from the list of requirements toward naturalization. Amendments in 1987 and 2004 and 35 proposed revisions also link military service with citizenship in Israel. I argue that those provisions were enacted mainly for symbolic reasons. Republicanism is not just a characteristic of a particular polity but a rhetorical trope for politicians in that state. In Israel, politicians wanted to emphasize the importance of republican participation, particularly through military service, as the ultimate sacrifice in constructing national identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Israeli Citizenship Law
• military service
• symbolic boundaries
• republicanism
• ethnicity

Historically, national political membership (citizenship) has been ideologically and instrumentally tied to military service. In the republican tradition, citizenship was typically associated with soldiering, military service, and homeland defense (Burk, 1995; Cohen, 1985; Cowen & Gilbert, 2008; Ezrahi, 2011; Goldberg, 2007; Kestnbaum, 2005; Leimgruber, 2010; Lin, 2000; Mann, 1988; Weber, 1978). Serving in the military and paying taxes are considered to be the most significant duties of the citizen (Turner, 2008). The composition of the military workforce is not just a technical question but reflects the social boundaries of identity and values of the political community (Krebs, 2005). Even in the twenty-first century, many countries have provisions connecting citizenship acquisition and active military duty. Following are several examples of such measures by democratic countries which are not especially associated with armed conflicts:

The French law No. 99–1141 states that French nationality is conferred by decree on any foreign national who, having volunteered in the French Armed Forces and having been injured during a military mission, requests said nationality (France, 1999). In 1990, the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act was amended to provide a procedure for posthumous granting of citizenship through death while on active-duty service in the armed forces (United States, 1989). Non-British citizens who enlist in Her Majesty's Forces automatically become exempt from U.K. immigration control. This means that they do not need immigration permission or a visa to enter and remain in the U.K. In 2015, Finland decided to waive the fee charged for a citizenship application if the applicant proves that he served in the Finnish army during the Finnish wars in 1939–1945 as a conscript or if he was called up to military service, or was a volunteer (Statutes of Finland No. 1522/2015). The Bolivian constitution of 2009 reduces the residency requirement for naturalization to two years for foreigners who serve in the Bolivian military (Bolivia, 2009).

This linkage is surprising as military service is usually limited to those already perceived to be part of the nation (and who, therefore, do not need to acquire citizenship or could obtain it easily in other ways). Most countries do not allow non-nationals to serve in their armed forces. The following paper explains why states add provisions that ease naturalization processes after military service, even when such measures are rarely used. The Israeli case will serve to exemplify this situation.

Alongside the Law of Return (1950), which gave precedence to Jewish immigration, the Israeli Citizenship Law (1952) also followed republican principles. For example, military service in the Israel Defence Forces (I.D.F.), or the death of a child serving in the I.D.F. would confer exemptions from the full list of requirements leading to naturalization. This provision applies only to non-Jewish persons, as all Jewish immigrants are considered equivalent to native-born citizens and receive their citizenship automatically. The amendments of 1987 and 2004 also discuss the abovementioned principle (Israel 1987). Moreover, 35 proposed amendments to the citizenship law link military service with granting citizenship in Israel.

The law itself, amendments to the law, and the parliamentary debates around them show that this republican principle has continued to be significant in Israel, and not just for Jews. In Israel, republican citizenship has come to be identified with an ethnicized conception of it, sometimes described as Ethno-Republicanism. Peled (1992), in one of his seminal papers, argued that ‘the confluence of republicanism and ethnonationalism with liberalism, as principles of legitimation, has resulted in two types of citizenship: republican for Jews and liberal for Arabs’ (p. 432). Elazar and Milikowsky (2020) also argue that the precedence given to the ethnocultural identity of the dominant majority group is a mutilated and perverse form of republicanism, as it rejects the republican commitment to the equal liberty of all citizens. While I concur that the republican ideal in Israel is limited, and, accordingly, non-Jewish minorities cannot fully assimilate, this paper shows that, at least symbolically, Israeli politicians wanted to preserve the republican ideology that allows the inclusion of all, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. In the following, I will show that although the route to citizenship in Israel is based on, and illuminates, the Israeli state's ethno-national basis, citizenship also relies on a universal republican civic tradition. I argue that the blend between the two principles – Ethnic and Republican – can sometimes complicate the undeniable link between Jewish ethnicity and republicanism in Israel.

The current study is aligned with the assertions of legal scholars who maintain that, sometimes, making a statement without concern for efficacy is the primary goal of legislation (Sanger, 2013). Sunstein (1996) studied the expressive function of law, that is that the function of law lies in ‘making statements’ as opposed to controlling behavior directly. To this end, he catalogues a range of possible efforts to alter norms through legal expressions about appropriate evaluative attitudes and argues that the statement of the law is often designed to move norms in fresh directions. However, laws are not just about changing norms, but also about the reproduction of existing symbolic boundaries. For example, the regulation of cross-border marriages through immigration legislation is part of policing state borders and national identity (Pallander, 2021).

As argued by Lamont and Molnár (2002):

Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space. They are tools by which individuals and groups struggle over and come to agree upon definitions of reality … Symbolic boundaries also separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership. They are an essential medium through which people acquire status and monopolize resources (p. 168).

Hence, more than mere technical regulations that determine immigration and naturalization processes, citizenship laws are instruments that can shed light on major social issues. In other words, they do not just regulate rights and obligations but demarcate the symbolic boundaries between the various groups of citizens, and between citizens and foreigners. Alexander (1992) suggests that the democratic code involves clear distinctions between the pure and the impure in defining the suitable citizen. At times, this cultural distinction between citizens and non-citizens is imposed by authorities who draw lines where they did not previously exist (Tilly, 2004). Brubaker (1992) adds that although citizenship is internally inclusive, it is externally exclusive, and thus, this status constructs the social borders between societies.

Of course, citizenship, republicanism, and military service have implications and meanings that go beyond the legal arena. Although the current article is primarily a legal analysis, it is intertwined with broader social and political matters. In this article, I show that the legal perspective is not limited to itself but constitutes a prism for constructing symbolic boundaries in Israel. Legal experts have investigated the relationship between those rules or court decisions and other legal instruments: bills, acts, constitutional amendments, international treaties, or other legislative instruments. Common legal questions include: to what extent does this practice conform to the legal norms in domestic and international law; to what extent do the citizenship laws correspond to previous rulings; do they conform to existing legislation or inter-state agreements; and are the laws proportionate in comparison to previous,regulations and, if so, how?

In contrast, the present study relates to the law as a practice that expresses a particular social and political worldview. As Nitza Berkovitch put it, ‘The law does not only reflect a given socio-cultural reality, but the legal discourse creates and establishes social subjects and the relations between them.’ (Berkovitch, 1999, p. 280). Moreover, when presenting the Israeli case, I will highlight both the social background for the legislative measures and their implications.

Citizenship traditions in Israel

According to the ethnic principle of the Israeli state, the Law of Return (1950) explicitly refers only to the right of Jews, regardless of their specific situation, to immigrate to Israel. In the vein of the central Zionist goal of encouraging Jewish immigration to Israel/Palestine,¹ Article One of the laws states the principle of return decisively and explicitly: ‘Every Jew has the right to come to his country as an oleh [Jewish immigrant, pl, olim]’.

The enactment of the ethnic component in the Citizenship Law (1952) was celebrated by the Knesset members as an important occasion that complemented the Law of Return (1950). Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, asserted that

The Law of Return and the Law of Citizenship that you have in front of you are connected by a mutual bond and share a common conceptual origin, deriving from the historical uniqueness of the State of Israel, a uniqueness vis-à-vis the past and the future, directed internally and externally. These two laws determine the special character and destiny of the State of Israel as the state bearing the vision of the redemption of Israel (Ben-Gurion, 1950, p. 2035).²

A close reading of the law itself, and the explanatory notes on it, make it clear that this law was not just a technical piece of legislation that specified the regulation of immigration to the new state, but was also a law that symbolically expressed the essence of Israel as the Jewish state (see also, Ben-Porat & Turner, 2011; Gavison, 2010; Shachar, 2000; Shafir & Peled, 1998).

Most contemporary understandings of the reasons and justifications for enacting Israel's citizenship laws contend that concerns over the Jewishness of the new state took precedence over all other considerations. Although the ethnic principle of the Jewish state was always one of its core values, Knesset Members also followed the liberal tradition of citizenship. They, therefore, extended citizenship to non-Jews according to their residence and birth status. In this study, I would like to show that Israeli politicians also embraced republican values – even toward non-Jews.

From a technical perspective, the Law of Return does not confer Israeli citizenship but only the right to immigrate to Israel. Israeli citizenship was only regulated two years afterwards. The first part of the Citizenship Law (1952) describes the different routes for acquiring Israeli citizenship. The first section restated the ethnic principle of the Law of Return – (1) that any Jew who immigrates to or lives in Israel automatically becomes an Israeli citizen. The subsequent provisions cover the granting of citizenship (but not automatically) according to other moral principles. That is, (2) citizenship is granted to permanent residents (i.e. Palestinians) who lived within the territory of Israel before and after its establishment, (3) citizenship is established upon birth (jus soli) within the state's boundaries (as long as one of the parents is an Israeli citizen), and (4) a naturalization process is instituted that requires residence, active participation, and cultural assimilation. The second part of the law (1952) deals with the revocation of citizenship (Herzog, 2017).

Smith (1997) argues that three conceptions of citizenship can – and usually do – coexist in the same modern polity. Liberalism, republicanism and ‘ascriptive inegalitarianism’ can be expressed simultaneously ‘in logically inconsistent but politically effective combinations’ (p. 470). In line with Smith (1997), Shafir and Peled (2002) analyze exclusion in Israel based on the three traditions of citizenship. The authors argue that inequality emerges from the conflicts between Jewish ethno-nationalist (and increasingly religious) discourse, the liberal and universal framework of citizenship, and the republican discourse of civic virtue – the success of the Zionist project.

The civic or civil ideal of republicanism rests on the assumption that an institution such as citizenship must rely on a meaningful human community. To form such a community, republicanism preaches an ethos of civic virtue, economic regulation, and active participation in advancing the common good (as understood by the state). Rousseau's notion of the ‘general will’ reflects one of the early modern postulations of the republican idea:

Each of us puts his person and his full power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole. At once, in place of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body [that] … formerly assumed the name City and now assumes that of Republic (Rousseau, 1997, pp. 50–51).

In other words, citizenship benefits are connected to rights, to active participation in the life of the political community and, especially, to identifying/advancing the community’s common purpose (as understood by the state) (Shafir & Peled, 2002; Smith, 1997).

According to the ‘republican exchange’, the state mobilizes its citizenry to sacrifice in war in return for rights and protection. Hence, soldiering forms a critical criterion for allocating material and symbolic rewards (Levy, 2013).

This has been especially true in Israel, where the military is a central institution through which the hierarchy of citizenship has been established (Kimmerling, 1993). Thus, service in the I.D.F. became the prime signifier of membership in the imagined Israeli civic community (Livio, 2017). In Israel and the rest of the world, military service is an important tool for immigrants to assimilate in the new society – socially and legally (Ben-Shalom & Horenczyk, 2004; Girsh, 2019; Sullivan, 2014; Wong & Cho, 2006). Nevertheless, military service and especially the placement within the army also reflect and reproduce the class and ethnic positions of its various recipients (Levy & Sasson-Levy, 2008). And although Israeli society is changing, and the commitment to military service is fading, the military remains an important institution for attaining social status, personal goals, and citizenship rights (Adres et al., 2012; Tiargan-Orr & Eran-Jona, 2016). This paper does not attempt to challenge the scholarly literature that has always linked military service to republican principles in Israel.

However, I will be arguing the civic ideal of republicanism is not just a characteristic of a society that connects active participation and advancement of the common good with national membership but a rhetorical speech act that carves out the symbolic boundaries among its members. As Krebs and Jackson (2007) argued, the rhetoric of military sacrifice has not only at times proven effective but ‘claims-making framed around collective military sacrifice challenged the coherence of Israel's ‘ethnorepublican’ citizenship’ (p. 51).

Section 4 of the Israeli Citizenship Law (1952) adds naturalization as one of several routes for acquiring Israeli citizenship. This process does not deal with Olim [Jewish immigrants] or Palestinian residents of Israel, who are entitled to their citizenship based on the Law of Return or birth, respectively. According to the republican civic tradition, acquiring Israeli citizenship requires residence, active participation, and cultural assimilation. Military service was perceived as a manifestation of active participation and, therefore, could replace other requirements for naturalization.

In 1987, the Knesset passed Amendment 5 to the citizenship law enacting a provision that authorizes the Minister of Interior to grant Israeli citizenship to an Israeli resident who is in Israel and identifies with the State of Israel and its objectives, if he/she or a family member has served actively in the Israel Defence Forces or has taken real action to promote security, the economy or other important matters of the state, or if granting such citizenship is in the special interest of the state.

Moreover, according to the same republican principle, Amendment 8 (2004) stated again that military service in the Israel Defence Forces, or the death of a child serving in the I.D.F., would confer exemptions from the full list of requirements toward naturalization. Although similar to the original law, this amendment added that even those who only partially enlist in the I.D.F. can benefit from naturalization exemptions.

In the same vein, 35 proposed amendments have been submitted over the years that suggested that military service would confer some privileges in acquiring Israeli citizenship. Some of these were passed into law – namely, the Israeli Citizenship Law (1952), Amendment 5 (1987), and Amendment 8 (2004). Since this paper is focused on the cultural perception that connects military service and citizenship, even proposals that were not eventually enacted are considered signifiers of the views of politicians.

Subsequent to my analysis of the Citizenship Law, the parliamentary debates preceding its legislation, and its amendments, I argue that those republican provisions were legislated mainly for symbolic reasons. Since only Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora serve in the I.D.F., the exemption has little practical impact. Thus, by adding those provisions, Knesset Members wanted to emphasize the importance of republican participation, particularly military service, as the ultimate sacrifice for the Israeli state. Next, I will present those measures and deliberations in detail.

Israel Citizenship Law (1952) and military service

According to Israel's Defence Law, service in the I.D.F. is compulsory. This law applies to (1) citizens of the State of Israel (unless they are exempt), whether they reside in Israel or abroad, even if they have another nationality; and (2) permanent residents of Israel, even if they are not Israeli citizens. Arabs and ultra-Orthodox persons are exempt from mandatory conscription (Røislien, 2013). Since the primary beneficiaries of the republican tradition in Israel are secular Jewish Ashkenazi males (Peled, 2008) it is not surprising that Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish politicians oppose any provision that strengthens the republican principle, even when the actual provision has little practical implication.

An Israeli citizen who left Israel with both of his/ her parents before the age of 16 or a child born abroad to an Israeli parent (whose family has not returned to live in Israel) is eligible for an army deferment (but not for an exemption). An army deferment means that the individual does not need to serve in the military as long as he/she resides outside Israel.

The Israeli Citizenship Law specifies, in section 5, the conditions for naturalization: (1) being physically in Israel at the time of the request for naturalization; (2) residing in Israel for at least three years in the previous five years; (3) being legally entitled to receive residency; (4) having knowledge of the Hebrew language; and (5) having the desire to settle in Israel. In addition, the naturalized citizens must take an oath of allegiance to the State of Israel and renounce any former citizenship.

The next section of the law specifies those who are exempt from the abovementioned conditions of naturalization: (a)(1) A person who has done regular service in the Israel Defence Forces or who, after the 16 Kislev 5708 (November 29, 1947) has served in some other service which the Minister of Defence, by declaration published in Reshumot [Official Gazette], has declared to be military service for the purposes of this section, and who has been properly discharged from such service; and (a)(2) A person who has lost a son or daughter in such service is exempt from the requirements of section 5 (a), except the requirement of section 5 (a) (4).

In the discussion about the law, Knesset Member (M.K.) Rostam Bastuni (Mapam) briefly remarked that Arabs who fought with the I.D.F. and for the country should receive Israeli citizenship automatically rather than being naturalized, even if they are no longer in Israel. The Knesset Plenum passed this provision on March 26 1952, without any debate or disagreement.

In general, the clause that grants exemption from the naturalization requirement due to military service is not necessary, as, even according to the original citizenship law of 1952, the Minister of the Interior may exempt an applicant from all or any of the requirements of sections 5 (a) (1), (2), (5) and (6) if there exists, in his opinion, a special reason justifying such exemption. Emphasizing that military service is one of those grounds that can ease the naturalization process provides a clear symbolic message: the Israeli citizenship laws follow the republican citizenship discourse.

Moreover, exemptions are also given to spouses of Israeli citizens. In section 7, the Israeli citizenship law states that the spouse of a person who is an Israeli national or who has applied for Israeli nationality and meets or is exempt from the requirements of section 5 (a) may obtain Israel nationality by naturalization even if she or he does not meet the requirements of section 5 (a). This means that naturalization following family unification with an Israeli citizen confers an exemption from the requirements of naturalization. Thus, the spouses of Israeli citizens do not need the exemptions given after military service, as they already enjoy them.

The 5th amendment

In 1987, the Knesset amended the Citizenship Law for the fifth time. The new amendment gave the Minister of the Interior the authority to grant Israeli citizenship by issuing a certificate to an Israeli resident who is in Israel and who, in the Minister's opinion, identifies with the State of Israel and its objectives, if he or his family member served actively in the Israel Defense Forces or took real action to promote the security, the economy, or other important matters of the state, or if granting such citizenship is of special interest to the state.

This amendment, once again, makes the exemption presented in section 6 superfluous. If, previously, the citizenship law maintained that a non-Jewish immigrant who serves in the military is exempt from a requirement of naturalization, the new addition maintains that such immigrants do not need to be naturalized but can be granted citizenship without their even applying for naturalization.

The parliamentary debates regarding this amendment clearly show the extent to which this section is mainly symbolic. That is, it is ‘making a statement’ about the desired boundaries of the Israeli polity.

The Druze community of Israel enjoys a special place in-between Jews and Arabs (Nisan, 2010). This group was construed by the Israeli state as politically separate from other Palestinians in Israel; therefore, unlike the other Palestinian citizens of Israel, Druze are drafted and serve in the military (Kaufman, 2004). Following the republican citizenship tradition, the members of the Druze community have been represented as ‘brothers-in-arms’ rather than Arabs or Palestinians. Druze claims-making framed around collective military sacrifice complicated the Israeli perception that ties republicanism with Jewish ethnicity (namely, ethnorepublican citizenship) (Krebs & Jackson, 2007).

M.K. Zeidan Atashi (Shinui) who proposed this bill with MK Amal Nasereldeen (Likud) explained that its goal is to confer citizenship on Druze soldiers in the I.D.F. who did not have Israeli citizenship. However, the legislators knew that those Druze could acquire citizenship by naturalization (and that the State can waive most requirements of naturalization for them). Nevertheless, it was argued that:

Out of pride, such a man refuses to go through the process of naturalization, learning Hebrew, etc. He does not want that. He says: If I serve the country, if I contribute to her security, if I contribute to her stability, I must surely have to be an Israeli citizen (Atashi, 1987, p. 2803).

To put it another way, the Druze soldiers wanted citizenship to be conferred automatically rather than by naturalization. M.K. Amnon Lin (Alignment) understood this request and added:

This [The law] is about people whose whole lives, and not just them, but also their sons and grandchildren serve in the military. What should a person do in addition to his service in the military, the sacrifice of his life, his blood, alongside Israeli soldiers, to express his desire to be a citizen of a country? What else is needed? To send a letter of request to the Minister of Justice to become an Israeli citizen? What is it versus the willingness to sacrifice life for the country? (Lin, 1987, p. 2805)

Because they are non-Jews, their citizenship cannot be conferred according to the Law of Return. The abovementioned amendment attempts to symbolically equate Druze and Jew. That is, their status as Israeli citizens should be granted automatically rather than after the process of naturalization (as required by other non-Jews in Israel).

The resistance to the naturalization process is not just technical, but symbolic. Several times during the parliamentary debate, Druze politicians expressed their opposition to pledging allegiance to the state as part of the naturalization process. However, this was not an act of defiance or expression of disloyalty. The Druze viewed this act as a bureaucratic mechanism that grouped them together with other non-Jews rather than with full republican citizens. As explained by the Justice Ministry:

What is wrong [with the current law]? After all, there is no problem for those Druze to naturalize. They fulfill all the requirements that appear in the naturalization section except for this thing that they do not want to come forward today and pledge allegiance. They rightly argue, and we agree with this claim, that after years of being here, serving in the I.D.F. and making sacrifices, there is no justification for coming and demanding that they make a statement of allegiance. (Ya’ari, 1987, p. 10)

By utilizing their military service, Druze, a small Arabic-speaking minority, have succeeded in acquiring an intermediate place in the Jewish state — between Jews and other Arabs (Krebs, 2006).

The 8th amendment

Like the original Citizenship Law of 1952, the 8th amendment of 2004 waives most of the naturalization conditions for those serving in the Israeli defense forces. The republican principle is evident in both periods, and, at least philosophically, takes precedence over the ethnic principle, meaning that one does not need to be Jewish to become an Israeli citizen. Nevertheless, it is important to repeat the fact that mainly Jews or permanent residents serve in the I.D.F., and in practice, only a few Israeli citizenships are granted through this provision.

The main difference between the original law and the new amendment is that the 2004 legislation grants the same exemptions even to soldiers who do not complete their full term of compulsory military service. While the conscription period at that time was 36 months for males and 24 months for females, the 8th amendment determined that military service of 18 months would be sufficient to fulfill the full list of exemptions. Moreover, the law grants the same benefits to soldiers who were not able to complete even 18 months of service due to illness or injury, unless they were discharged from service following criminal conviction or military incompatibility.

In addition, Amendment 8 to the Israeli citizenship law also played a role in the parliamentary clashes between the opposing political parties. The religious parties – the ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi Shas party and the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party – which were in the opposition at that time, chose to turn the preliminary vote on this amendment into a vote of confidence in the coalition³ implying that, if it did not pass, this could bring down the government. This measure would place other Jewish political parties in a political dilemma. That is to say that they would have to decide between placing their vote according to religious affiliation (Jewishness) or republicanism (patriotism) and against their parliamentary bloc. In the end, the republican principle was stronger: the deliberation on the proposal continued and the opposition lost the no-confidence vote.

The secular Jewish political parties also used partisan rivalry to support their claims. Although this amendment was proposed by politicians from the left-wing Meretz party and was not part of the centre-right coalition, the coalition could not vote against it. Such a vote would have presented them as unpatriotic – a position that they would not be willing to subscribe to. In addition, by introducing this proposal, Meretz could emphasize its animosity to religious parties and politics.

The amendment was also used to emphasize the contribution of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (F.S.U.) to the Zionist enterprise. When MK Yuri Shtern (National Union) introduced it in the second and third readings of the law, it was presented as an ‘important and ethical proposal’ that ‘fixes a very serious distortion in the system’ (Shtern, 2004, p. 53) even though the amendment did not change the already existing republican principle (but only the number of months needed for upholding this principle).

Legislative proposals

In addition to the Citizenship Law (1952), 33 proposals were introduced to grant citizenship following military service – to soldiers or to their close family members. Those proposals can be divided into four types. Some of those proposals explicitly explained that the new provision was directed at non-Jews. For example, the proposal of 1985 (which would eventually be passed as the abovementioned Amendment 5 to the Citizenship Law) clearly maintained that this provision was intended to grant citizenship to Druze soldiers. Some of the proposals discussed the citizenship of immigrants from the F.S.U. who were allowed to enter Israel according to the Law of Return but were not considered Jewish according to the Halakha (religious law). The third type of proposal was geared towards ‘Lone Soldiers’ some of whom are non-Israelis who volunteer to serve in the I.D.F. and their families. The latter proposals usually did not explicitly indicate that the provision was directed at non-Jews, but, as those proposals suggested waiving part of the naturalization requirements and since Jews automatically receive citizenship, in essence, they were intended for non-Jews. The last group of proposals suggested giving retrospective citizenship to soldiers who died in the 1948 War of Independence that led up to the establishment of the state.

As I have argued regarding the legislated provision in the Citizenship Law, the proposals also manifest clear symbolic objectives to elevate the importance of military service in Israeli society. In most cases, those soldiers would have been able to acquire Israeli citizenship in another way – often more easily – or in the case of fallen soldiers in the 1948 war, this citizenship is purely symbolic and has no practical implication.

The objections to those proposals show that indeed their main objective was to ‘make a statement’. Like in the eighth amendment, the main opposition to the proposal came from Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties. During the debate on the 2004 proposal to give citizenship to the families of non-Jewish I.D.F. soldiers, MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) claimed that ‘for us, this issue is a violation of the status quo, because when you propose legislation that opens the door for Israel as the Jewish state to absorb immigrants and gives citizenship to non-Jews, it is against everything we have done in the past’ (Gafni, 2005, p. 82). In other words, it was the principle that was under debate. A different point of view was expressed by M.K. Talab El-Sana (United Arab List) who argued, during the deliberations on a 2003 proposal to give citizenship to I.D.F. soldiers, that ‘Citizenship is a civil issue, so it is impossible to make citizenship contingent solely on military service, otherwise you become some kind of Sparta regime, where the military is above all else and military service grants all rights’ (El-Sana, 2004, p. 53). In this case, the opposition was not just to the specific provision, but to the republican tradition in general that, in Israel, gives advantages to Jews over non-Jews or to secular Jews over ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Conclusion

Although I argue that those provisions that connect military service and Israeli citizenship are mainly a symbolic act by Israeli politicians, they do have some practical meaning. That is, in a few cases, there have been non-Jewish immigrants who utilized this law as part of their naturalization.

For example, Bondi Faibon was the first child of migrant workers to join the Israeli Army in 2006. Private Faibon preferred to define his enlistment in terms of republican discourse, corroborating the prevailing view among Israelis of military service as the quintessential rite of passage into substantive membership in Israeli society (Kemp, 2007). Joana Chris Arpon, a daughter of Filipino migrant workers, received the 2017 presidential ‘distinguished service’ award. This recognition of her service for the Israel Defence Forces was a significant step toward becoming Israeli, culturally, and administratively (Keum, 2018). Nevertheless, those stories do not represent the experience of most non-Jews in Israel.

The Israeli case signifies a unique historical context in which military service was, and still is, of extreme importance. However, the connection between military service and citizenship exists in many countries. For example, in the United States the association between citizenship and military service is still reflected in public policy in at least two ways. First, military service remains a formal obligation of citizenship, even if it is one that the government has not obliged Americans to fulfill since 1973. It should be noted that the Selective Service (and military conscription) in the United States is not limited to citizens. In the past, the obligation to serve in the military was shaped more by the exigencies of wartime mobilization and gender considerations than by citizenship. The reach of United States’ drafts in the Civil War and during the World Wars was extended to declarant aliens. In the Civil War, the U.S. government also tried to declare as draft-eligible those aliens who had voted in an American election; non-citizens were also allowed to serve as substitutes for drafted citizens (Herzog & Adams, 2018). Second, military service has been recognized as a basis for expediting naturalization. Millions have become Americans in this fashion since the Civil War (Jacobs & Hayes, 1981; Krebs, 2009). Hence, Wong and Cho (2006) have argued that jus meritum is as ingrained as jus soli and jus sanguinis as a basis for granting citizenship in U.S. history.

In Israel, the republican principle, that grants naturalization to non-Jews after military service, has remained largely symbolic rather than being put into practice. This can be explained in two ways. First, it shows that usually the ethnic citizenship discourse takes precedence over the republican one. In practice, most cases of citizenship are granted automatically, mainly in connection to the Law of Return (1950) rather than after naturalization. Second, it shows that this debate was not about immigration and naturalization but about internal Israeli issues (religious vs. secular identity or hierarchy between groups).

Pursuant to my analysis of the citizenship law and the parliamentary debates preceding its legislation and its amendments, I argue that those republican provisions were legislated mainly for symbolic reasons. Since mainly Israeli citizens, permanent residents, or Jews from the Diaspora serve in the I.D.F., the exemption has little practical impact. Thus, by adding those provisions, Knesset Members wanted to emphasize the importance of republican participation, particularly military service, as the ultimate sacrifice for the Israeli state.

Although the target of these legislative measures is non-Jewish immigrants, this symbolic struggle attempts to elevate the republican value of military service within Israel. That is, the debates around republicanism for non-Jews are in fact a symbolic struggle about the importance of the military for Jews. In particular, two symbolic struggles have been significant – the struggle over the non-religious identity of the state, and the struggle over the hierarchy of the sub-groups within the society in Israel.

Although the ethnic principle takes precedence in immigration and naturalization in Israel, de facto many non-Jews have entered Israel. At least symbolically, the republican tradition that highlights military service provided those immigrants a path towards becoming Israeli citizens. However, as the Israeli state has become less homogenous, the strong ethnic ‘glue’ is fading, and with it the significance of the military. Thus, while the republican tradition assists in the incorporation of non-Jews into Israel, this development also weakens the republican path towards full assimilation.

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Ben Herzog

Dr. Ben Herzog is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to associate professor in the US) at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the 2022-2023 Israel Institute Visiting Faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He held a few visiting positions at Yale University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and Quinnipiac University. His articles on refugees and citizenship have been published in many academic journals, including Nations and Nationalism, European Journal of Sociology, Citizenship Studies, and the Journal of Immigration Asylum and Nationality Law. His book Revoking Citizenship: Expatriation in America from the Colonial Era to the War on Terror was published by NYU Press.

Notes

1 Under the British Mandate, the territory that would become Israel was called Mandatory Palestine. Therefore, although the Zionist goal was not to establish a Palestinian state, Jewish immigration to Israel before the establishment of the Jewish state was understood as immigration to Israel/Palestine.

2 The words, ‘redemption of Israel’, encompass the multiple meanings of the expression which are at the core of this paper. Although the common understanding of the term ‘Israel’ refers to the Jewish people in general, it can also be perceived as relating to the Jews who immigrated to Israel, the sovereignty of the state, or even the non-Jewish minorities who reside in the state.

3 According to Article 44 of the Knesset Rules of Procedure, a motion to express no-confidence in the Government may be submitted by a parliamentary group, or several parliamentary groups together, as a proposed item for the agenda or as a motion at the close of the debate on any item on the agenda (but not in a preliminary debate on a bill or motion for the agenda).