Ireland, e.g., has generous passport and citizenship laws for descendents of emigrants from Ireland, but it is not the "state of the Irish people world-wide," such that I, a US citizen whose great-grandmother was Irish, have more rights in Ireland than Mr. Leopold Bloom of Dublin, a life-long resident of that city, barred from marrying (!), owning property, or exercising other rights of citizenship; but that's the situation that obtains, mutatis mutandis, in Israel. And if I insisted that apartheid South Africa had displayed an "ethnocultural definition of nationhood," you might think that although accurate I was being a bit euphemistic.
--CGE
On Sun, 5 Aug 2001, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> > Not so. Israel is unique in that states, however democratic or
> > dictatorial, are generally considered states of their inhabitants, but
> > Israel is officially *not* the state of its inhabitants but that of "the
> > Jewish people world-wide" -- defined by blood (or, if you prefer,
> > "nationality").
>
> This is not only not unique, it's not even rare, CG. The
> ethnocultural definition of nationhood is more common in the world
> than the civic one. All such nations have a diaspora by definition,
> and dozens of them have a law of return, from Lithuania to Sri Lanka.
>
> Michael
> __________________________________________________________________________
> Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
>
>