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ZE'EV B. BEGIN | This time, instead of starting with Genesis, let’s start with Exodus. In ancient times, when a person hired a laborer, he took a pledge from him to guarantee his good behavior.

SIMON RABINOVITCH | Between December 2014 and May 2015 Marginalia ran the Defining Israel forum with documents and essays on Israel’s parliamentary struggle over whether to pass a law defining Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and if so, what that would mean.

YOUSEF T. JABAREEN | Since the establishment of the state of Israel, relations between Arab citizens and the Jewish majority — including state authorities — have been fraught with tensions related to the divergent national identities of the two groups.

MOSHE KOPPEL | In 2004 the Knesset’s Committee on Constitution and Law, under the chairmanship of Michael Eitan, held hearings regarding the drafting of a constitution for Israel.

YORAM HAZONY | Israel’s political constitution has been in a condition of crisis since the 1990s — a crisis that the various proposed versions of the Jewish nation-state law are intended to resolve.

YEHUDAH MIRSKY | An odd and simple-minded question, perhaps, given the ubiquity and centrality of nation states in our world, but still worth asking, especially when first principles are on the table.

NIR KEDAR | The controversy over the proposed Basic Law: Israel is the Nation-State of the Jewish People revolves mainly around its content.

NAHUM KARLINSKY | Spring in Israel is beautiful but brief.

ISRAEL BARTAL | I am a proud Israeli patriot. I was born in a Tel-Aviv suburb less than two years before David Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the State of Israel in the city’s museum building.

ALEXANDER YAKOBSON |There is something strange about the debate on whether it is a good idea to enshrine Israel’s character as a Jewish state in a basic law: it regularly ignores the fact that this definition already appears in three existing basic laws.

DAVID N. MYERS | At the end of March 1919, Jewish leaders from Europe and the United States assembled in Paris in advance of the peace talks that would bring a formal end to the First World War.

GIDEON SAPIR | The media recently exposed the Israeli public to a barrage of spin regarding the proposed Basic Law: Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish People.