MyMosa Moon In Israel How to keep your faith and your willy too. (II Part)

It should not come as a surprise  the fact that the opposition Jewish /non Jewish is the first way to establish one's  personal identity in Israel, and related to that, that a religious identity is the most important in defining identity even of non Jewish people.  In fact, imposing religious standards on those who do not desire it,  a civil marriage is not accepted or contemplated in Israel law.

One method is to marry outside Israel; nearby Cyprus became the most convenient venue for many Israelis. Paraguay  which allows marriage without the presence of the couple  to be arranged by the Paraguayan consulate in Tel Aviv, is another jurisdiction used .

A law has been passed at  the Knesset on March 16, 2010; this bill, however, would only grant "couplehood union" status to couples who both declared non-religious status

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel

What are the implications of  the fact that one has to declare his/her non religious-status?  The mere fact that it has to be declared means that a  non religious status is viewed as an exception, a difference, a non religious status is not automatically understood as part of one's his her own citizenship.  Moreover this status does not grant full civil rights . 

Denial of civil rights on the basis of religion is most often described as religious persecutions , what can be called  a denial of  rights on the basis of  non belonging to any  religious organisations?  .

 We have to deduce that  Israel  is not one of the states, as we know them, heirs  of   enlightenment and French revolution, in which freedom of religion and civil rights   were granted as descending from  a godless entity: the state itself. 

Certainly  enlightenment, declaration of universal rights of men, did not prevent Nazi concentration camps and holocaust.

 In Israel the  history  of  Jewish identity seems to have  completed one full circle in the dialectic process and is now passing through the last synthetically phase .  Once impose by persecutors, Jewish identity    imposes herself  as master, non recognizing, or recognizing as non entities, the other non religious identities.

Sartre declared that even if the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would create him. The anti-Semite creates for himself a Jew that is representative of all that he loathes and hates.  On the other hand the democratic leftist is anti semite  because,  on the virtues of the universal rights of humanity, he   denies  the Jew his identity as a Jew. While the anti-Semite creates the Jew to destroy him, the democrat negates the Jew,  pretending  the problem of anti-Semitism does not exist.

But most of the times,  Jewish identity cannot be escaped because is imposed by  others, the non Jews.

The Jew, Sartre argues, affirms his role in a drama  in which Jewish identity  is imposed on him by the other, the anti-Semite, who acts as the oppressor.

The most dramatic examples were those of assimilated Jews who discovered their own identities trough Nazi and fascism persecutions.

That was the paradox that led to the creation of Israel, here we came to the completion of the full circle.  Universal rights  of men, are not  granted by the mere force of a declaration, they have  to be granted by a state, and the rights of the Jew to be Jew by a Jewish state. But a Jewish state grounded on  the   right of being Jew, affirms paradoxically the religion over the state, and the religious status superimposed over  that of just being a citizen of a state, therefore denying to non Jews and even non religion persons the full  enjoyment  of citizenship rights of that state.
Obviously enough the discrimination, so we may it call it, of non religious couples, results in a  strange privileged situation for gay couples ( privileged only in comparison to countries like Italy which do not have any kind whatsoever recognition of same sex unions)
Same-sex marriage cannot legally be performed in Israel  because only government-recognized religious authorities — all of whom disallow same-sex marriage — may officiate marriages. Foreign marriages, including same-sex marriages, are recognized in Israel. Furthermore, like unmarried opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples in Israel can access nearly all of the rights of marriage in the form of unregistered cohabitation status, akin to common-law marriage. According to a 2009 poll, 56% of Israelis support equal rights for same-sex couples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Israel

  (to continue)