An ethnostate generally is a bad, illiberal idea, but concerning Israel, the ideas that are good in terms of ideology would have been, and possibly still would be, worse in practice.
The existence of Israel as an ethnostate is more down to the ethnic preferences of others in Russia¹, Germany, multiple middle eastern countries², and elsewhere³, than the ethnic preferences of jews.
Most of the jews I have known in my life are liberals who see Israel as a refuge against illiberals, not supremacist weirdos that get attention on the internet.
Exactly! I have the same experience. Most jews I know are not Zionists and are amazing people. Israel is not about religion, but about ideology as you point out and is deeply illiberal.
Didn't downvote but I'll bite: Haven't states largely always been ethno-states, and isn't "ethno-state bad" a relatively modern and potentially as-yet unproven argument in the big scheme of things?
It's clearly bad to specifically re-engineer the ethnic composition of an existing state to create one, particularly violently, but I don't know that it necessarily follows that a naturally occurring ethno-state is conceptually abhorrent as you seem to be suggesting. Japan is very much such a state - is Japan bad for existing?
What is modern are states like we have now. Passports didn't exist before WW1 for example. The idea that people can't freely move across land and imaginary lines we call borders is a modern idea.
The history section has an example of a passport in the Old Testament and a lot of other examples where people needed travel documents and were limited in their travels way before the First World War.
Wow, has reading comprehension escaped the world? What is different about the passport system compared to the examples you gave? Just think about it for a while.
The distinction is a world wide system of borders we call countries where you need passports to cross. That is distinctly a modern thing. The way countries work now is a distinctly modern thing. Yes, there were always some places that had walls and borders, but never as a world-wide system.
The way boats and airplanes work is also a distinctly modern thing, with those technologies curiously advancing around the time you claim passports were invented.
And ironically the average person travels less than 500 years ago. Shocking but true. Evem though technology made traveling easier. The reason is money and urbanization. You now need money to travel when I'm the past you didn't.
Yes, there are some Arab Israelis but the vast majority of Arabs under Israeli governance would never be suffered to assimilate, specifically because it would change the ethnic character of the state.
Ok, totally true but faith and race are conflated for jews, much more so than muslims or christians. Mizrahi jews aren't called Arab jews, judaism is not a proselitizing religion in general for 5,000 years so of course it has bloodlines rather than converts.
Israel is an ethnostate apartheid system on that conflated definition. After all, religion is almost as hereditary as race.
I guess I don't see the distinction as all that important? Aside from the fact that it would be an all-time troll if 2 million people in Gaza declared that they're Jewish now and applied for aliyah.
EDIT: how is anyone downvoting thos. Who thinks it's a good idea?