154 chapter five separation between the Israeli state and the Jewish nation was also affirmed in Tamarin’s appeal to the Supreme Court whose participation in the same national consensus was revealed in the opinion of Justice Shimon Agranat, then President of the Court. Ruling that “there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation … composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry,” Justice Agranat went on to stress that recognizing a uniform Israeli nationality “would negate the very foundation upon which the State of Israel was formed.”6 In his denunciation of the petition, he continued: If a handful of people or more wish to separate themselves from the Jewish people – only twenty-three years after the establishment of the state – and acquire the status of a separate Israeli nation, this separatist trend should not be regarded as legitimate and should not be recognized.7 At first glance, the accusation of separatism appears to be extreme and unfounded. Tamarin is an Israeli citizen who merely asks to be officially recognized as bearing the nationality of his state. Nationality expresses the legal relationship of an individual to her/his state, and given that Tamarin is not detracting from nor formulating an exclusive identity within and apart from an Israeli identity, the accusation of separatism appears to be misplaced. But if we take a closer look, we see that Tamarin’s petition does advocate a certain separation from the Zionist framework of identity and inclusion that serves as the basis for the State of Israel. And here the Jewish ethnocentric and primordial foundations of Israeli nationhood and citizenship begin to emerge. The Israeli government and its Supreme Court cannot recognize an ‘Israeli’ nation separate from a ‘Jewish’ nation because, from their ideological perspective, Israel is the state of the Jewish nation. To officially recognize an Israeli nationality, and even to adopt the language of an ‘Israeli’ nation as a category distinct from a ‘Jewish’ nation, would imply that, at some conceptual level, the two are distinct. That one category includes a collective identity that the other does not. However small, this conceptual separation between ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jewish’ would have juridico-political repercussions for the entrenchment of Jewish ascendancy within the state. Of course, this is because, in doing so, it could open a window of inclusion within the Israeli nation for nonJewish citizens. It is the conceptual separation between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Israeli’ along with the potential practical implications of having to 6 Tamarin v. State of Israel (1970) Israeli Supreme Court, 26 P.D. I 197. 7 Gorali, “So this Jew, Arab, Georgian and Samaritan go to court.” Emphasis added.