[Sorry about getting back to this late. My computer has been in repairs for the last few days-NN]
Let's start with a broad statement- Judaism is really, really odd. Which means that making any analogies or categorizing it in terms of race, ethnicity, culture or religion is bound to run into "yes but" qualifications. It's one of the things that makes Judaism really interesting, and has managed to piss off (to a genocidal degree) endless other cultural groups and governments.
As well, I personally am not particularly supportive of a definition of citizenship controlled by intolerant orthodox rabbis, even as Palestinians are denied the right to return to their own and their families homes of only a generation ago. A multiracial state is not only desireable in Israel, it's a reality even within Green Line Israel, including not only a racial diversity of Jews, but Palestinians and increasingly foreign workers (over 10% of workforce at this point). A country that needs guest workers is a country that needs to change its immigration and citizenship criterion.
That said, my original point was not that Israel's policies are desireable, just that they are not particularly odious when compared to most countries immigration rules.
Nasreen Karim argues "that the very premise of the state of Israel is antithetical to the enlightenment-democratic concept of secular citizenship."
Well sure- I called it theocratic, but what immigration policies don't run smack up against the largest dilemma of enlightment political theory, namely who qualifies for participation in the polis? Many Islamic nations bar non-muslims from a whole host of political positions and shape their countries in numerous theocratic ways. Germany not only has its racist immigration laws, but uses various religious authorities as part of the administration of state functions, most notably the requirement that church authorities give permission for church members to get an abortion.
The US officially does rather well on formal racial and religious neutrality rules, but its policies and politics are more soaked in racism and theocratic debates than almost any Western country. How many Western states have the leaders of major political parties competing to cite their personal relationship with Jesus?
Michael Pollack wants to argue that Judaism, despite its acceptance of conversion, is not less nationalistic and racialist than a country like Germany, since "Yes, it's true, you could start a Jewish bloodline if someone converted. But you could start a German bloodline if someone got naturalized." This is a nice argument, but it ignores the fact that people can convert OUTSIDE Israel to gain the right to be naturalized, a very different phenomenon from citizenship itself being passed on by birth to the children of citizens. It is precisely the transnational nature of Judaism and the ability to voluntarily convert in order to join that makes Judaism an "allegiance" not a race. That there is only one country that bases its legal structure around Judaism, as opposed to the Christian traditions of many Western states or the sharia Islamic traditions of other Middle Eastern countries, does not many Judaism less religious because of that unique national mapping of Judaic religion.
Michael wants to write off this allegiance aspect by arguing that Judaism's ethnic diversity is only due to the fact that the "one-parent rule legally allows an awful lot of intermarrying with the locals over 5000 years." Aside from debates over whether the spread of Judaism is really all lineal ethnic descent, as opposed to pickup conversion in various areas, the fact that Judaism was retained by intermarried children over so many generations despite ethnic drift is still a mark of allegiance, not simple ethnic solidarity.
That "an orthodox conversion is dauntingly difficult" seems a poor criticism of Israeli acceptance of immigration on that basis. Immigration to most countries is dauntingly difficult; in fact, it's almost impossible for most people. If the United States required the equivalent degree of civics lessons and protestations of loyalty, I have no doubt that millions of people each year would assume that difficulty and flood the country. That most do not do so in order to immigrate to Israel is not because of the difficulty of Orthodox conversion, but because they don't think immigration to Israel is worth becoming an Orthodox Jew.
The Russian semi-Jews are an interesting case, since their definition as Jews is less self-chosen than an identification imposed often involuntarily by the state and Russian culture. Obviously, Israel is not merely a theocratic state given its secular Zionist roots but also a haven for those who even unwillingly have had a Jewish identify imposed on thm; in that sense, the Russian Jews are the last refugees from state-defined forms of Jewish discrimination. The Orthodox theocrats object to acceptance of the "goyim" Russians for that reason, but again this seems less an ethnic or cultural definition of Judaism (since many of the Russians have so little Jewish identification at all) but rather a political definition of Judaism- the politics being the politics of Jewish persecution.
My point is that I am all for condemning Israel for the sins of oppression against the Palestinians, as any country imposing such oppression on another should be condemned and pressured to end such oppression. Where I make an objection is where that criticism verges into a form of anti-Jewish argument that singles out Judaism or even Zionism as some particularly odious form of religion or nationalism, from the "Zionism equals Racism" propaganda to the particular fixation on Israel's Law of Return while ignoring the racism of almost every other immigration policy in the world. Israel has many of the sins of any form of religious and nationalist state policy; that Judaism inspires an odd and unique manifestation of these policies is interesting analytically, but are largely irrelevant to the only real issue of Israeli state policy- namely the abominable treatment of the Palestinians. Anything else usually smacks of turning from the delegitimacy of Israeli policy to an attack on Judaism itself as a kind of bastard religion/culture- exactly the kind of attack which led to Israeli's feeling a need for their own state in the first place.
In that sense, asserting the "normalcy" of Judaism and Israeli nationalism is almost a requirement for any assertion that a more multi-national state is desireable in the region, for only if Jewish nationalism and Jewish religious and Jewish cultural aspirations are considered equivalent to other such desires can the basic multi-national pluralistic logic of "secular citizenship" work.
-- Nathan Newman