Israel today is not a "Jewish-only" state, since it has non-Jewish citizens who have full voting rights, even if many other rights are not fully-equal with Jewish citizens.
Mat:
The case of Israel/Occupied Palestine is extremely complex, more complex than apartheid South Africa. It is constituted by a web of overlapping and interloecking relations of domination mediated by multiple categories of highly politicized demarcations of difference, including 'race', religion, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, gender, class, etc., many of which include subtle sub-categories.
The State of Israel has no constitution. It continues to invoke laws from the British mandate and even the Ottoman period against Palestinians (ironically many of these laws were used against Jews by the British and Ottomans). In addition, Israel has never met any of the conditions of the UN resolution making Israel a state.
Birth certificates for Jews and non-Jews differ importantly. Both contain categories for religion, nationality, and citizenship. But for Jewish infants religion alone is identified; for non-Jews, religion and "confession" are required on the certificate. For Palestinians, registration as Sunni or Shi'ite is required, for example. This is in line with a policy to consolidate confessional divisions within the non-Jewish population (reminds of the apartheid division of the African population into 'tribal' groups, while 'white' was not broken down into British, Dutch, Greek, etc.).
Whereas the citizenship of Jews is registered as Israeli at the time of birth, the citizenship of non-Jews is left indefinite. Citizenship for Jews can be granted by "residence" or "return". Citizenship for Jews who are born to parents of whom at least one is not an Israeli citizen can only be granted by return. But birth within the territory to non-citizen Jewish parents does not grant citizenship per se. It must be accompanied by return. Acquisition of citizenship is automatic on return, unless a statement in writing is recieved to the effect that citizenship is not wanted.
The prototype birth certificate for a Jewish citizen in the State of Israel reads: religion: Jewish; nationality: Jewish; citizenship: Israeli.
The terms Israeli and Jew are not coterminous. Yet Israel confers a priori exclusive and privileged access to mnational resources and services on its Jewish citizens, to the exclusion of its non-Jewish, mostly Palestinian Arab citizens. However, Israeli legilsation is not directed toward those non-Jews incorporated, albeit in terms of extreme legal discrimination, into the Israeli state. It is directed at the 2 million plus displaced Palestinians, the "absentees" and "refugees." The unilateral declaration of independence of May 15 1948 declares Israel a "Jewish State."
There is no such thing as an 'Israeli nationality.' There is 'Israeli citizenship,' but citizens are divided into nationalities such as 'Jewish,' 'Arab,' etc. As Chomsky has argued, Israel, a self-proclaimed 'Jewish State', has citizens who are non-Jews and therefore Israel can never be democratic. The extent of departure from democracy might be seen as insignificant in the case that the respects in which the state is Jewish were marginal and largely sympolicy, but in fact that is not the case at all.
to be cont.