23. 4 35 Establishing the Ethical Basis for Ethno-Theological Sovereignty in Israel Amal Jamal Prof. Amal Jamal is head of the Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence through Education and of the International Graduate Program in Political Science and Political Communication at Tel Aviv University. He is co-editor in chief of Public Sphere Journal. This article is based on the opening presentation at a conference held at Tel Aviv University devoted to “How Should We Think About the Nation-State Law?” on October 21, 2018 Today, in the Israel of 2018 — with its restrictions on basic liberties as refected in aggressive legislation against any critical public discussion of the policies of the hegemonic right-wing government — the importance of deliberating public matters, including the Nation-State Law, can no longer be taken for granted. Liberal circles are rightly suspicious that broad segments of the Jewish population consider open and free critical deliberations of government policies as a form of “unpatriotic” behavior and therefore illegitimate opposition. Today’s Israel is characterized by an atmosphere of intimidation, supported by the passage of laws whose main aim is to silence voices that oppose the ideological worldview of the right- wing coalition of conservative nationalist parties headed by the Likud. It is suffcient to mention the “NGOs Law,” the “Nakba Law,” the proposed “Cultural Loyalty Bill,” and the systematic attack on academic institutions, the “wayward” voices in the media and human rights organizations to illustrate this point. The passage of the Basic Law “The State of Israel – Nation-State of the Jewish People,” supported by 62 MKs and opposed by 55, has created a new constitutional reality in Israel. The constitutional importance of this law is rooted in the fact that Basic Laws are intended to be building blocks in an incrementally constituted future constitution of the state, in accordance with the compromise proposed by MK Yizhar Harari and accepted by the frst Knesset on June 13, 1950. The law, by its very defnition and by the intention of its authors, paints the constitutional and judicial culture in Israel in new colors, as it constitutes a kind of quiet revolution against fundamental liberal principles which were expected to begin taking root in the practices of the legislative and judicial systems in the 1980s and 1990s. The Nation-State