Lost Tribes, Indeed

Democracy is a far more complicated concept than many, and perhaps most, people seem to realise.

It does not, for example, oblige any member of either House of Parliament to vote in favour of withdrawal from the European Union because of the referendum result, or indeed for any other reason.

In fact, it never obliges any member of either House of Parliament to vote in any way whatever.

Rather, it is an endlessly delicate balance among majority rights, minority rights, and individual rights.

Within which, it is possible for a state to be both Jewish and democratic. If its citizenry contains a Jewish majority.

But a state comprised of Israel and the West Bank, or call it what you will, is never going to contain a Jewish majority. That is just a fact.

In fact, Israel itself has largely given up on a Jewish majority, and will now settle for any kind of non-Arab one.

It will take in Russians who refuse to eat kosher food, and who insist on taking their Israeli Defence Force oaths on the New Testament alone.

It will take in, or at least it now contains, Russian Nazis; yes, really.

It will take in East Africans who have invented a religion based on the Old Testament brought by Christian missionaries.

It will take in Peruvian Indians "converted to Judaism" and then put on the plane, in a single and remunerated action.

It will take in absolutely anyone at all, so long as they are not Arabs.

Even the Pashtun, who are now classified as a Lost Tribe with a view to airlifting them to Israel in future, since at least they are not Arabs.

They are Sunni Muslims, of course. But that is not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.

The Arab fifth of Israel's current population, the majority in about half of its land area, has a very tough time.

But its members have the vote. There have been Arabs in every Knesset.

If Israel proceeds down its current path, then it will have to allow citizens of some ethnicities but not others (or of one, anyway, and that the majority) to vote, to live anywhere rather than only in certain designated areas, and so forth.

There is a word for that.