Constitutional and Political crisis in Israel: Revision of the idea of a national Jewish State

Krotov Andrei Vladislavovich ORCID: 0000-0001-5812-8339 Doctor of Law ANO VO Nizhny Novgorod Institute (branch) of Moscow University for the Humanities and Economics 603074, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, Sormovskoe highway, 20 pravonnov@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

1. Introduction                               

On August 30, 2022, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog began his speech at the celebrations in honor of the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress by quoting the text of the Mishnah (oral Torah): "It is said in the Mishnah, tractate Brachot: "Whoever sees the place where miracles happened to the People of Israel, says: "Blessed is He Who has performed miracles for the fathers in this place" ^[14].

Quoting the text of the Mishnah, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog stressed the importance of the event held under the leadership of Theodor Herzl in the period from August 29 to August 31 , 1897 in the city In Basel (Switzerland), the First Zionist Congress, T. Herzl wrote: "Zionism is a return to Jewry even before the Jews return to the country" ^[13].

The ideology of Zionism is enshrined in the content of article 1 of the Basic Law: "Israel is the national State of the Jewish people" of July 19, 2018: "The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people, in which they exercise their natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self—determination; the realization of the right to self-determination in the State of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people". In accordance with Article 5 of the said Basic Law: the state will be open for Jewish repatriation and the gathering of Jews scattered around the world. 

In 2022, referring to the "three pillars of Zionism": dilemma – the problems of assimilation and preservation of the national identity of Jews; privileges - to be Zionists and conduct Zionist work; duty — positive and active responsibility for Zionism, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog drew attention to the crisis of the state ideology of Israel — Zionism, which became one of the first markers the constitutional and political crisis that was forming at that time in the country.

In his address in 2022, the President of Israel focused on the common duty of the members of the Zionist family: "... to regain Zionism. We must reclaim the word "Zionism" and carry it with our heads held high and our backs straight."^[14] 

The initiative of Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog implies the formation of an essentially new state ideology, revealing the features of which, bizarrely combining the ideas of Zionism created by people largely indifferent, and sometimes hostile to the religion of Judaism, the President of Israel notes: "from the Jewish and Israeli point of view, Zionism means settling the Land of Israel and building Israeli society; strengthening Israeli democracy with a proper culture of debate and discussion; strengthening of Jewish identity among all communities of the country; etc." ^[14]. Summarizing, he points out that modern Zionism rests on the deepest roots, weaving together the inseparable threads of the people, the land and the state.

The research of the problems of the modern constitutional and political crisis in Israel is devoted to the works of a number of both Russian and foreign authors: S. G. Melkonyan; L. Samarskaya; Y. Levin, D. Kretzmer, R. Porat, J. Br?ls.

The works of these scientists certainly deserve attention, at the same time, researchers find the causes of the constitutional and political crisis of 2023 mainly in the field of political governance (S. G. Melkonyan; L. Samarskaya; Yu. Levin ^[25]) or consider it as the result of unsuccessful judicial reform (D. Kretzmer ^[26], R. Porat ^[27], J. Bruls ^[22]).

In this paper, an attempt is made to eliminate the revealed fragmentation of scientific research by presenting the author's assessment not only of the peculiarities of the creation and development of the State of Israel as a national mono-ethnic state, but also by offering judgments on the prospects for the development of the concept of nation-states in modern postmodern society. Without claiming to be a comprehensive study of the problem, since it is complex and multifaceted, we have made an attempt to highlight and analyze the most, in our opinion, vivid and significant elements related to the stated research topic.  

In this work, we use such research methods as universal dialectical, logical, historical-legal, comparative-legal, formal-legal, which is due to the objectives of this study.

The analysis of the motives that prompted the President of Israel to focus on the processes of "ideological search", as well as the causes that triggered the constitutional and political crisis of 2023, should begin with the disclosure of the content of a number of terms related to the stated problems: state ideology, national ideology, constitutional ideology and ideology of the ruling group.    

        2. Interpretation of terms

 The range of opinions regarding the content of these terms is characterized by variability in both domestic and foreign legal doctrine.

          P.A. Astafichev writes: "Ideology can be understood as a rather narrow semantic category: for example, a worldview (a system of views and ideas, worldview, vision, way of thinking, etc.), on which the political and economic system is based ...ideology is an official worldview that is imposed on society by ideological methods...Ideology is both a state and a mandatory worldview...This is not the only point of view. Ideology can also be understood as a broader semantic category: also a worldview (a system of views and ideas, worldview, vision, way of thinking, etc.), however, on which the foreign and domestic policy of the state is based" ^{[2, p. 13]}.

 B. S. Krylov points out the existence of state and people's ideology, while he considers state ideology as: "a set of systematized ideas that determine the assessment of reality by the state and its organs" ^{[9, p. 75]}. Developing this idea, V. V. Nevinsky writes: "the state ideology reflects not only the "assessment of reality", but also the focus of the entire state mechanism on the implementation, for example, of the strategic guidelines established by the constitution in the form of fundamental constitutional principles - the recognition of human rights as the highest social value, the creation of a mature democratic, legal, social, secular and federal T. Parsons notes that: "ideology is a normative value system reflecting generally accepted ideas about the desired type of social system" ^{[12, p. 18]}. V. I. Yakunin points out that the national idea "is the meaning of the life of Russian society and the state, the very meaning without which neither society nor the state are historically unviable" ^{[21, p. 148]}.

  Interesting is the opinion of A.V. Polyakov, who notes that: "Ideology has a normative character: it raises the question of good and evil...Being normative, ideology offers an ideal that needs to be realized. Far from being only pure knowledge, ideology creates only such ideas and values that can order to move to action. Ideology is a kind of value knowledge, i.e. knowledge based on value preferences" ^{[11, p. 23]}.

As B. S. Ebzeev notes: "the essence of the ideological function of the Constitution of the Russian Federation is that it recognizes ideological diversity, stating that no ideology can be established as mandatory, state. This is how the current Constitution dissociates itself from the Soviet constitutions that preceded it, which were typical ideological documents that formulate the basic postulates of socialism" ^{[5, p. 210]}.

The well—known foreign author Hayek Friedrich August von wrote that: "ideology is born of the desire to achieve complete control over the social order and the belief that it is in our power to consciously determine — in any way we please - all aspects of this social order...if any social order is based on ideology, then any criterion of compatibility of the provisions of law with this order must also be ideology" ^{[18, p. 223]}.

A review of the above scientific views allows us to conclude that ideology is a system of views, assessments, and ideas about social life that form individual and collective value orientations.

It is possible to agree that it is permissible to present an assessment of the effectiveness of state ideology both through the degree of implementation of constitutional provisions and by correlating it with public values.

But in the proposed coordinates of thinking, we do not find an answer regarding the origins of the formation of both state, national, and constitutional ideology. Is the state ideology always equal to the constitutional or national one? Whose interests are expressed in the state ideology, and for what reasons is there a discrepancy between the state, constitutional and national ideology? 

Uncertainty gives rise to questions, a number of which we will try to resolve in this paper.

 Without denying the importance of these approaches in legal science, we consider it possible to propose the author's definition of the definitions "state ideology", "national ideology", "constitutional ideology" and "ideology of the ruling group", which seems necessary within the framework of the issues studied in this work.

The content of the above concepts is directly related to the peculiarities of the structure of modern society, considered as a single socionormative space, as well as in the change in the ratio of normative power and social power, namely, the civilizational practice of changing the "actual force of the normative" to the "normative force of the actual".         

Under the "national ideology", the formation of which became possible due to the homogeneity of the population, we propose to understand a system of values, beliefs and attitudes manifested in various spheres of social functioning, having a sign of stability and shared by the majority of the population.

The national ideology, refracted in the continuum of modern civilization, characterizes the nation as a whole, not only uniting the population, but also articulating universal guidelines of justice, being the basis of self-determination as a person as a member of the nation, the collective "we", and the nation as part of the modern human population. A genuine national ideology not only forms obligatory behavior, both individual and collective, but also influences a person's thoughts, shows the reasons and conditions for the existence of a nation, reveals the goals of nation-building and leads to their achievement, forms a nation as part of world civilization.

Separately, in our opinion, the "constitutional ideology" should be singled out.

As you know, the constitution does not relate to statutory law and cannot set the content of national or state ideology at the will of those in power.

Otherwise, if we treat the constitution as a simple positive law, then any ideology embedded in the constitution will eventually serve only the interests of the ruling group or will be revised in its interests, and, in fact, will be an instrument for the realization of the instinct of political self-preservation. 

The Constitution "embeds" the national ideology into the legal system, in turn, the national ideology itself undergoes a stage of modification under the influence of the constitution as a special political and legal phenomenon.  Thus, the legal form of "national ideology" is formed — "constitutional ideology".

Let us illustrate this process by the example of the formation of the constitutional ideology of the State of Israel. The ideology of the Jewish national liberation movement (Zionism), whose goal, according to T. Herzl, was to save the nation from assimilation and anti?Semitism through the creation of a national state, when creating the state found expression in the text of the Declaration of Independence of Israel of 14.05.1948, which today is considered as an integral part of the uncodified Constitution of Israel.  

Proclaiming the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) — The State of Israel, a State that will be open for the repatriation and unification of Jews scattered around the world, members of the People's Government, which was the executive body of the People's Council, whose members, in turn, represented all political parties in Israel, enshrined in the text of the Declaration the principle of full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of religion, race or gender, freedom of religion and conscience, the right to use one's native language, the right to education and culture, which correlates with the content of paragraph D of Article 10 of section B of Part 1 of UN General Assembly Resolution No. A/RES/181 (II) of November 29, 1947.

 Adopted in the period from 1958 — 2018 . The basic laws of Israel continued the process of modifying the national ideology, updating it in the focus of modern legal values, achievements of legal science, taking into account the peculiarities of state-building.

It is not uncommon for constitutional ideology to represent the quintessence of the values of the constitution itself, in other words, constitutional ideology is an idealized model of constitutional principles and relations formalized in the Basic Law. Such an ideology seems to be self-sufficient, it is "Ding an sich", as a rule, it is independent neither of the will of the population nor of the will of the ruling group, which ultimately determines its low effectiveness, as well as ultimately numerous attempts to revise it. 

In conditions when the national ideology becomes the meta-basis of the national legal system, finds its expression in the text of the Basic Laws (Constitution), determines the tasks and goals of public administration, fills civil institutions with life, correlates with the moral and ethical values accepted in society, such a national ideology becomes a state ideology.

In turn, the differences between the state ideology and the ideology of the ruling group are that the ideology of the ruling group is based on the interests and values of the ruling group, their leader, and not the population. Ideology, therefore, exclusively serves the ruling group, and the state becomes an ideological slave, subordinate to the political authorities.

When is the ideology of the ruling group born? At a time when politicians succumb to the temptation of undivided power, when rulers are distracted from the general will and will of the state organization ^{[15, p. 112]}.

          The implementation of public administration on the basis of the ideology of the ruling group, and not the national ideology, encourages the population not to act on the basis of a voluntary belief in the binding power prescriptions, their moral and ethical correctness both at the level of groups and at the level of an individual who are aware of their necessity in order to maximize their life aspirations, but to mandatory behavior under threat the use of force, through the use of the intimidation apparatus by the ruling group.

For what reasons is the ruling group interested in the formation of the state ideology in parallel with the replacement of the national/constitutional ideology by the ideology of the ruling group?

The answer lies in the instinct of political self-preservation. Ruling by force of persuasion, appealing to the narratives of national (and in fact pro-government) ideology, is much more stable and durable than ruling under the threat of the simple use of force. 

The formation of ideology is always a special search process. On the part of the population, it is a search for the most optimal model of collective existence, on the part of the ruling group - the most optimal model of domination. The more authoritarian the regime of government is, the more actively national ideology, constitutional ideology and ideology of the ruling group are being formed in parallel.  This process is really parallel, for example, in the constitutional ideology, the provisions of both the national ideology and the ideology of the ruling group may well exist together, but over time an increasingly autocratic government will reduce the share of the provisions of the national ideology to a minimum, which will entail a revision of the constitutional ideology.   This thesis is illustrated by the content of the Basic Law: "Israel is the national state of the Jewish people" of July 19, 2018, the provisions of which are quite controversial, including in their systemic interpretation with the provisions of the Declaration of Independence of Israel of 05/14/1948, UN General Assembly Resolution No. A/RES/181 of November 29, 1947 (II).                              

The "ideological quest" that continues permanently in all nation-states is explained by the fact that a nation-state cannot exist without a state ideology, just as any collective cannot exist outside the system of ideas that unite the population, respectively, there are no non-ideologized states in the world, as well as non-ideologized constitutions.

Any state, and as you know, the state is primarily a political institution, is the sphere of the most fierce competition of various ideological concepts. In this case, the processes of democracy have only accessory properties, namely, they allow ensuring compliance with the national ideology — constitutional and state.

The very rule based on the original ideology makes it possible for the state to exist as a self-sufficient and to a certain extent closed socio-political organism, respectively, and the power group in this case feels more at ease and confident in its decisions.

In East Germany, S. Huntington wrote, communism provided the ideological basis for the division of Germany; if you abandon ideology, the logical reason for the existence of the East German state disappeared ^{[19, p. 57]}.

As noted by P. A. Astafichev: "Russian statehood during the periods of the Moscow Tsardom and the subsequent Peter the Great Imperial Russia was ideologically mediated, motivated and conditioned by the Orthodox faith to such an extent that after the loss of this factor, it ceased to exist overnight. The tsar ceased to be a sacred person already during the reign of Alexander II; the whole society turned away from Nicholas II and, especially, from the tsarina in February 1917. No one defended them, tsarism ceased by itself, because the ideological source of monarchical statehood had completely dried up by that time" ^{[2, p. 14]}.

    The ideological basis in the conditions of the formation of Israel as a national mono-ethnic (at least declaratively) state of Jews in the XX century was provided by Zionism.  The rejection of the ideas of Zionism, or rather the loss of their relevance in the format proposed by T. Herzl, to which the President of Israel T. Herzog drew attention in 2022, raises the question of the purpose of the existence of the modern state of Israel, which, without a prompt response to this challenge from the power group, became one of the reasons for the constitutional and political crisis in 2023  

Of course, the postmodern democratic state is not bound by any exclusive ideology, on the contrary, ideological freedom is usually guaranteed in most constitutional orders, and this shows the peculiarity of the structure of the postmodern world, which is a more complex social system. In many ways, such ideological pluralism is a necessity, since the progress of society is based primarily on the variability of ideas, goals, and actions. For example, Article 2 of the Constitution of the Czech Republic stipulates the following: "The state is based on democratic values and cannot be bound by any exclusive ideology or religion"; in accordance with Article 15 of the Constitution of Ukraine: "Public life in Ukraine is based on the principles of political, economic and ideological diversity. No ideology can be recognized by the state as binding."

But this does not mean that the formation of a national ideology and its consolidation in the text of the constitution are prohibited. The ban in this case acts to elevate the ideology of the ruling group to the rank of the only true, exclusive for the state. The state is bound by national and constitutional ideology, but not by the ideology of the ruling group.

The constitutional prohibition existing in the text of the constitutions of a number of countries (mainly post-Soviet) on the establishment of any ideology as state or mandatory presupposes the provision of ideological, and with it political freedom, and guarantees the modernization of state ideology depending on the evolution of national and constitutional ideology, and not a ban on the establishment of state ideology as such (which in itself is an Aporia). In other words, the state ideology is not something "eternal" and is a movable structure, the actualization of which is necessary taking into account the interests and needs of the nation, it is alive and reflexive. Thus, ideological freedom is a tool that allows expressing in the state ideology the sum of the sententia of various strata of the population.

A modern democratic state performs a number of ideological functions:

1. Guarantees ideological freedom.

2. Ensures the implementation of national and constitutional ideology. For example, in accordance with Article 141 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal: "1) Persons united by a common political ideology, philosophy and program in accordance with the laws issued on the basis of paragraph "c" of part 3 of Article 12 have the right to organize and operate as a political party of their choice. They can communicate their ideology, philosophy and program to society in order to receive support and unite with others, as well as perform any other activity for these purposes. Any law, regulation or decision restricting such activities is incompatible with the Constitution and ipso facto does not apply."

3. Prohibits extreme forms of ideology that affect the "viability" of the state, changing its most essential features. For example, according to Article 98 of the Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica: All citizens have the right to unite in parties to participate in national politics. However, it is prohibited to create or operate parties that, by their ideological programs, methods of activity or international relations, seek to eliminate the foundations of the democratic system in Costa Rica or oppose its sovereignty. Decisions on this issue are taken by the Legislative Assembly by a majority of two-thirds of its members and upon receipt of information from the Supreme Court on Electoral Matters." In accordance with Article 160 of the Constitution: 1. Deputies who lose their mandate lose their mandate.: (d) Are found guilty in court of a crime related to the performance of their functions or participation in organizations that adhere to fascist ideology."

If the national and constitutional ideology have not been formed, and the ideology of the ruling group has acquired the status of state/constitutional, then it seems quite reasonable to raise the question of the existence of a national state as such, at least in the context of this study.

3. The causes of the constitutional and political crisis in Israel

The crisis of state ideology, noted by Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog in 2022, became a harbinger of the largest constitutional and political crisis in the country's history in 2023.

The unsuccessful actions of the coalition government of Benjamin Natanyahu, aimed at modifying the judicial system under pressure from members of the coalition government, demanding that the state focus on serving the ideology of the ruling group, revealed the mistakes made in the field of state-legal construction.

          Large-scale protests of the population against the reform of the judicial system have become the most massive in the history of the country ^[16], exposing the polarization of the population, emphasizing the importance of creating and proper functioning of a system of checks and balances in the field of public administration, focusing on the need to complete the process of creating the Constitution, as well as the formation of independent, possibly unrelated to the Supreme Court of Israel, constitutional bodies control, and so on.

 The judicial reform of 2023, initiated by the Government of B. Natanyahu, is only one of the external triggers of the deep crisis of the very model of Israel as a national Jewish state.

We consider it possible to put forward a hypothesis about the following reasons for the constitutional and political crisis in Israel in 2023.

A) In Israel, an attempt has been made to combine two opposites: the liberal democratic values of the Western world with the archaic provisions of Judaism, the ideas of an era long gone from us.

The basic principles of the modern State ideology of Israel were formulated during the creation of the State and enshrined as a constitutional ideology in the Declaration of Independence of Israel of 14.05.1948, as well as in the 13 Basic Laws of the State of Israel.

In the twentieth century, Israel developed to a greater extent as a Jewish and democratic state.

At the beginning of the XXI century, the vector of state-legal construction was significantly changed, which is associated with the activation of the processes of desecularization of Israeli society.

In 2018, the most controversial of all the basic laws was adopted - the Basic Law: "Israel is the national State of the Jewish people", paragraph 3 of Article 1 of which contains the following: "The realization of the right to national self—determination in the State of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people. Jewish holidays and memorial days are regular state rest days" (the Basic Law of July 19, 2018).  

The state, constitutional ideology, and national legal system have become increasingly filled with narratives of Judaism, distorting the liberal democratic principles originally embedded in the national ideology and enshrined in the text of the Basic Laws, which, in turn, affects the effectiveness of law, the strength of the prescriptions of which depend on moral grounds, they are largely based on the idioms of Judaism today. and they do not cover the diverse palette of Israeli society.

The peculiarities of the Israeli political system suggest the need to form a coalition government that depends on the support of parties representing the religious, including the ultra-religious part of the country's population. Accordingly, through the patronage of a certain religious party (parties), the ruling group uses it for its own purposes, while actively implementing the process of formalizing the ideology of the ruling group, as a state and constitutional ideology. In this case, the main function of the state also changes, increasing assistance to ordinary people is replaced by satisfying the growing interests of the governing group, the main goal of the state is seen as serving the ideology of the ruling group.

But in modern society, a person's identity is not limited to belonging to one nation or one ethnic group, a philosophical and religious trend, especially since such a trend can be traced in open societies, using the terminology of Karl Popper. A modern person, even if not quite consciously, feels himself as a sum of various value intentions that are not bound by the borders of a certain state. Restrictions on religious freedom, leveling the emancipation of beliefs, the conflict between Judaistic values and the ideals of democracy, the rule of law, the rule of law, liberalism lead to a slowdown in the process of state-building as a systemic progressive phenomenon.  

 The formation of the state and constitutional ideology of Israel based on the combination of Western liberal democratic narratives with philosophical and religious ideas of Judaism is also mediated by the gap that arose as a result of the loss of independence by Israel in the I century and the re-establishment of the state in 1948. Such a gap, felt primarily in the constitutional and political sphere, has not been overcome to date, while political parties, including those belonging to the liberal-democratic group, largely support the current situation of balancing on the verge of a clash of interests, which is associated with both the political conjuncture and the fear of losing control over a part of the population that encourages the construction of a theocratic state.

The cultural, legal, political, ideological and religious diversity that has emerged over the past centuries, the transition from a local civilization to a global one, the formation of cosmopolitan law, that is, all those factors that characterize modern society as a postmodern society, thus make it practically impossible for a viable combination of philosophical and religious ideas of Judaism with modern Western liberal-democratic teachings. 

        B) Israel, as a mono-ethnic nation-state founded by Jewish repatriates, was supposed to serve the dissimilation of alien cultures introduced by Jews who had been immersed in the cultural environment of the exodus states for a long time. As Chaim Weizman wrote: "We did not come to Eretz Israel to copy the life of Warsaw, Pinsk and London. The essence of Zionism is the change of all the values that Jews have learned under the pressure of foreign cultures" ^{[24, p. 110]}, that is, it was about the implementation of the concept of a "melting pot" in Israel, realizing the polyethnic characteristics of the families of repatriates.

          However, the implementation of such a concept has failed. In fact, the cultural and ethnic diversity that has developed in Israel on the basis of saturation of the state with repatriates immersed in a completely different culture of the country of origin, their family members who do not feel part of Jewish society, has led to the formation of a declared monocultural/monoethnic, but actually multicultural/polyethnic society.

         In Israel today, the concept of "separation of spheres of culture" is being implemented, which involves the separation of public and private spheres of cultures. In the public sphere, cultural homogeneity based on the adoption of uniform formal norms, controlled for the most part by Jewish society, is encouraged, and in fact imposed, including through the use of various constitutional and political mechanisms. In the private sphere, there is the possibility of cultural diversity. Holding "pride parades" by sexual minorities, various forms of family relations, etc., are standard practice in Israel today.

From the above, it follows that there is a Lapierre paradox. The attitudes of ethnocentrism, actively enforced by the public authorities and based on references to the common history, religious rituals, experiences and difficulties of centuries-old Jewish history, largely do not correspond to the real behavior of the population of the country, its values and interests, are in contradiction with the constitutional and national ideology.

The increasingly frequent appeal of Israeli politicians to age-old traditions, ideas, public quoting of religious texts, trite boils down to the inability to rationally explain their actions (the more incomprehensible the text, the more meaningless it is) in the context of satisfying the interests of the entire population, and not just its part supporting the actions of the government.

It does not matter who makes a judgment, Yitzhak Herzog or Benjamin Natanyahu, a politician or a respected professor, the reliability of their judgments is assessed solely from facts and reasoning, and only in this case they will find support from the population.    

C) In the Preface of the work "The experience of the modern solution of the Jewish question", Doctor of Law Theodor Herzl wrote: "The idea I am developing in this book is very old. This is the restoration of the Jewish state… I am not saying anything new: this should first of all be borne in mind when discussing all the details of my presentation" ^{[4, p. 78]}.

           The ideas of T. Herzl, outlined in the work "The experience of the modern solution of the Jewish question", are the development of the popular concept of "every nation is a state", created on the basis of the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the results of the Great French Revolution in 1789, As D. Held notes: "The emergence of the European community of states was accompanied by the emergence of a new concept of international law, which is known under the name of the "Westphalian Model" (so named after the Peace of Westphalia, the signing of which in 1648 ended the Thirty Years' War). This model of international law and international relations operated during the period from 1648 to 1945…States were understood as "separate and isolated political structures" over which there is no public authority authorized to direct or restrict their activities. According to this concept, the world consists of separate political units pursuing their own interests, supported by diplomatic initiatives and, ultimately, their armed forces" ^{[20, p. 43]}. 

The critic of the theory of the nation-state Ivor Jennings noted that the people themselves cannot decide anything until someone decides who this people consists of. With regard to the process of establishing the State of Israel, the answer to this question was presented in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Palestinian Mandate of the League of Nations of 1922 and UN General Assembly Resolution No. A/RES/181 (II) of November 29, 1947. The international community had to create a national Jewish State.

The creation and development of Israel as a Jewish national state (meaning a mono—ethnic version of the state) became the state ideology in the XX-XXI centuries and predetermined the features of state-legal construction.

 It seems that today the International Westphalian System, in which the world model is presented as a consortium of nation-states (the nation in this case is considered not only as an ethnic category, but also as a category of citizenship, that is, the nation as a community of citizens of one state), individual political units, has come to its end.

I. Wallerstein wrote: "historical systems, like any other (including political ones — K. A.), have a limited life span. They have a beginning and a long period of development, but in the end, as they deviate further from equilibrium and reach the point of bifurcation, the end comes" ^{[3, p. 8]}.

In recent decades, there have been certain impacts that lead not only to large-scale, but also unpredictable changes and indicate the final stage of the crisis of the idea of nation-states.

We are witnessing tectonic changes in the world order system formed as a result of the Second World War. The role of transnational corporations in the economy, including the national one, is more noticeable than ever. There is a unification, and in some cases, the absorption of various cultures in favor of the formation of a "universal culture", regional and international law, supranational judicial bodies are actively developing, fundamental changes are taking place in the sphere of state sovereignty. The role of global and local governance is increasingly important. In the context of the breaking of national borders in the focus of the virtualization of society, national governments are less and less able to meet the demands of citizens without "looking back" at the global mainstream.       

D. Held notes in modern international law the tendency to strengthen the idea that a legitimate state should be a state that recognizes some common democratic values. He points out that: "All these changes are important symptoms of the transition from Westphalian international law, in which the main role is assigned to the state, to the new law, which, as a rule, seeks to limit the limits of state sovereignty. The latest striking example ... is the destruction of the traditional notion that humanitarian intervention to prevent serious human rights violations is unacceptable simply because it violates the principle of national sovereignty. This showed the UN-sanctioned invasion of Iraq, Somalia and Bosnia. For example, UN Security Council Resolution No. 688 of April 5, 1991, which gives legal status to the concept of security zones for Kurds in Iraq, provides a new justification for the extent to which the Security Council can participate in resisting a state that mocks its own people. As a result, the traditional notion that state sovereignty has priority over humanitarian requirements is being revised" ^{[20, p. 82]}.

According to the European Communities Act of 1972: "The delegation of sovereignty to the European Communities is irrevocable, and the lex posterior rule does not apply to Community law norms. Based on the decision of the Court of Justice in the Factortame case, the Court explicitly stated that the British court is obliged not to apply (to set aside) an act of Parliament in a specific case, if it contradicts the provisions of EU law" ^{[7, p. 20]}.

It should also be noted the position of the International Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945), which for the first time in history ruled that when the norms of international law that protect basic humanitarian values come into conflict with state laws, any individual is obliged to violate them (except in cases where there is no possibility of a "moral choice"), that it is referred to as "free duties".

The formation of several legal systems on the territory of the state is one of the signs confirming the beginning of the departure into oblivion of the idea of the nation-state.

Back in the mid-twentieth century, Arnold Toynbee argued that "the new history of the West was determined by the combination of two powerful forces: industrialism and nationalism. However, since the last quarter of the XIX century, they have entered into a disastrous confrontation with each other, because the international scale of industry has torn national borders, and the virus of nationalism has infected even the smallest and most unviable ethnic groups. The First World War was the result of the collision of these two trends and clearly demonstrated that an era is coming when nation-states can no longer be self-sufficient" ^{[1, p. 204]}.

The processes of globalization have only emphasized the archaic idea of a nation-state, a state in which most of its institutions are supposed to function in a closed space, which is impossible in the modern world.

There is a long overdue demand in society for movement towards rational ideas and rational values, as a result of the struggle for building a better society that has begun since the birth of mankind, but such a request cannot be satisfied within the framework of the system of nation-states, while the pressure on the political authorities of the state from the population is increasing, which is due to the peculiarities of modern postmodern society. 

We distinguish the following grounds for the "crisis" of the concept of nation states: 1). formation of the category "global citizenship"; 2). reduction of the state's ability to regulate the national economy; 3). actualization of global problems of humanity, assuming the presence of supranational and subnational centers of power. States are not able to ensure the protection and growth of the well-being of the population in the conditions of the formation of new challenges; 4). the dissolution of national cultures in the general, universal culture of modern civilization, the characteristics of which are the pluralism inherent in the postmodern era, parity and autonomy of members of society; 5). the growth of contradictions between the individual, small social groups and the state; 6). increased competition between the processes of globalization and attempts to preserve the format of nation-states, which, in turn, leads to conflicts, both interstate and corporate inter-national; 7). changing the system of legal regulation. Modern international law does not regard sovereignty as an absolute guarantee of international legality and legitimacy. The international human rights regime presupposes the formation of collective coercion in order to comply with internationally recognized human rights standards, respectively, States no longer have the right to treat their citizens as they want, which is actively opposed by authoritarian rulers.

4) Conclusion

In the new global world, the postmodern world, closed societies, that is, societies characterized by traditionalism, dogmatic ideology, guided by archaic religious norms, despite the sufficiently successful solution of short-term tasks, for example, to counter external military threats, are doomed to gradual disappearance, dissolution in more successful forms of social cooperation. Modern events in economics, politics, and law demonstrate the possibility and necessity of modernizing the International Westphalian World Order system. 

Today, the connection of communities and peoples into complex systems is increasingly evident, which cannot be identified solely with the help of the concepts of nation and territory.

Political communities are in a permanent state of transformation. Of course, transformation per se is not a new phenomenon. The history of political communities is replete with changing forms and structures, ranging from empires and nation-states to emerging global and regional governance structures and organizations. In these conditions, it is important to maintain the "flexibility" of the political and legal system, to ensure the timely transformation of the characteristics of the state, law, depending on the needs of the population.

In a postmodern society, state-legal construction based on religious ideas formulated millennia ago seems to be a utopia. The more religious norms have legal significance, the more society falls into the shackles of archaism, increasingly moving away from modern reality.

The modern political authorities of Israel are trying, in order to preserve power, to protect themselves from reality, artificially slow down the urgent need to modernize both the public administration system and the state ideology, which draws its strength from the concept of a national mono-ethnic state. This thesis is illustrated by the actions of the political forces that came to power in 2022. Following the results of the 25 elections to the Israeli Parliament held on November 01, 2022, the Likud Party, which received 23.4% of the votes, was forced to form a coalition with a number of religious parties that passed into Parliament. In order to retain power, that is, in fact, driven by the instinct of political self-preservation, the coalition government did not proceed to the modification of public administration, the revision of the state ideology (the need for this process was noted by the President of Israel in 2022), but to the implementation of the ideology of the power group in the constitution, which led to a serious constitutional and political crisis.

The lot of any clerical states is deep religious violence based on a sense of superiority of one group of the population over another. The more political authorities seek support in the processes of clericalization, turn to institutions of coercion, the more terrible the results of such rule.

          The decrease in the effectiveness of the government's actions, the strengthening of the split of civil society, which is illustrated by the mass protests of the population against the government's actions in 2023, the growing threat to personal and collective security, confirm the need to modernize the idea of Israel's development as a national Jewish state.

          Power in modern society is increasingly shifting, albeit not through public procedures, to global financial institutions. Globalization, generating new forms of social organization, displaces "national states as primary economic and political entities of the world community" ^{[20, p. 201]}. The national economic space ceases to coincide with the territorial borders of the state, respectively, convergence occurs and interdependent ties of various communities are formed, regardless of the borders of national states.

The peculiarity of modern civilization is that people are dependent on the global world more than on the national state.

We believe that the basis of modern postmodern civilization is not nation-states, but local population groups formed on the basis of various ideas uniting them, which, in turn, are not in irreconcilable conflict. In particular, it is possible to highlight the presence of global control centers in a format that does not repeat the specifics of national states. Cultural, philosophical, religious, and legal ideas in such a society are increasingly subjected to convergence processes. The postmodern society appears as a society of mixing, a society of organic coexistence of various, seemingly previously irreconcilable, social contradictions.   The cultivation of national models in such a society does not require the functioning of national states, the justification for the existence of which was solely due to the existing disunity and contradictions between people. This leads to the formation of a new political and legal system, where various material sources and sources of legitimacy will be the basis for the existence of scattered centers of power and influence, without the fullness of power inherent in the nation-state. In turn, coordination will be carried out on the basis of the norms of cosmopolitan law by global control centers in correlation with various constitutional orders and open debates.  

The power of government in nation States is not reduced as a result of globalization, it is transformed into qualitatively different institutions.

 We see, P. Anderson wrote, people "moving mobile between states, an active exchange of ideas and cultures in the virtual space, which confirms the existence of a qualitative leap, a fundamental break from what was the new world of the beginning of the XX century, the world of the triumphant modernity" ^{[1, p. 28]}.

          Today, Israel, as the national state of the Jews, is on the path of transformation into a state consisting of a number of socio-cultural communities, a multi-ethnic state in which the nation, including the titular one, is a civil (political) category. In this case, the population is united not on the basis of special ethnic or religious characteristics, but on the basis of common values and ways to achieve them, with an orientation towards the content of cosmopolitan law and the values of universal culture.

          The nation in this case is a pluralistic society consisting of individuals united to achieve common goals and building their relationships on the basis of consent.

          Thus, the way out of the constitutional and political crisis that has arisen seems to be most preferable through a radical modification of the existing model of the state structure, which implies not only a revision of the functioning of the government, including the state ideology, but also, to no lesser extent, the reform of the system of national law, with an active parallel process of constitutional construction, guided by the norms of cosmopolitan law. The procedures for "suspending" judicial reform in this case are only temporary measures, which, in turn, in the future may lead to an intensification of the constitutional and political crisis involving new actors and spreading to new social spheres.  

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