A Knesset bill advanced Sunday will obligate senior Israeli diplomats to make loyalty pledges to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state before being posted abroad.
Backed by Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and presented as a government bill, the amendment to the current foreign service appointments law cleared its first reading, and will need an additional two votes before becoming law.
The change would require Israeli ambassadors, consuls, and other heads of diplomatic missions to swear the following to the foreign minister or another authorized civil servant, as a condition of their appointment: “I pledge to maintain loyalty to the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
This is in addition to an existing requirement to swear to “undertake to maintain loyalty to the State of Israel and its laws and to fulfill with honesty and faith every duty imposed on me as a civil servant.”
Cohen, his office reaffirmed on Sunday, is pushing the bill in reaction to the attempted 2022 appointment of an Arab lawmaker to a consulship, despite her pointed criticism of Israel as a Jewish state.
At the time, then-Meretz lawmaker Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi was up for the role of -consul in Shanghai, in an effort to remove her from a shaky coalition’s voting ranks. An Arab Muslim, Rinawie Zoabi said that she does not connect to Israel’s “Jewish soul,” and before her brief stint as a lawmaker in the last coalition, she co-edited a document that does not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Meretz MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi seen after a meeting with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid outside the Foreign Ministry offices in Jerusalem, May 22, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“The role of the state’s emissaries and representatives is to represent the State of Israel and its values and act in its interests. The State of Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, and anyone who does not recognize this will not be able to serve as an ambassador and represent the State of Israel,” Cohen said in a statement released shortly after the vote.
In 2018, Israel passed the controversial Basic Law: The Nation State, which enshrined the state’s Jewish character.
In February 2022, then-foreign minister Yair Lapid floated appointing Rinawie Zoabi as consul in Shanghai, as part of an attempt to remove her from the Knesset, after she torpedoed key votes as part of criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its Arab citizens. The government sought to clear her Knesset seat in order to hold its fragile coalition together, an effort that ultimately failed in June 2022.
Lapid, now opposition leader, drew considerable flak from his own coalition — and from then-opposition chief and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — for the attempt.
In May 2022, Rinawie Zoabi withdrew her name from consideration before the appointment could be finalized. She eventually decided not to run again for Knesset in the November 2022 elections, in which her party, Meretz, failed to pass the electoral threshold.
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