liberal pretence of a jewish state129 the Israeli juridico-political order, Jewish-Israelis are a majority population and to criticize state-led initiatives that embed a Jewish character in all spheres of life in Israel would be to reject the “democratically expressed will of the majority of Israel’s citizens” (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 125). For all intents and purposes, the liberal-Zionist framework created by Yakobson and Rubinstein deprives Arab citizens and non-citizens under Israeli control of any means of challenging the racialized legislation and practices of the Jewish state. As a result, Israel is bestowed the advantages and exemptions given to both a minority and a majority collective oscillating between a strong and a vulnerable disposition depending on the preferred political discussion. Israel as a ‘State for all of its Citizens’ A similar dynamic emerges with Yakobson and Rubinstein’s account of Israel as a ‘state for all of its citizens’. On the one hand, the authors assert that “[i]n principle, an Arab citizen of Israel can call him–or herself ‘Israeli’ without giving up their own national identity or adopting that of the Jewish majority.” But on the other hand, they also assert that the name Israel is “anything but neutral” (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 7, 142). Here, the identity of ‘Israel-Arab’ is meant to solve the paradoxical existence of Palestinian citizens of a Jewish state. Asserting that “neither Herzl nor the first Zionist leaders … saw the future Jewish state as a country without Arabs,” the authors make reference to Theodor Herzl’s utopian novel, Altneuland, and point to ways in which the treatment of minorities had a prominent place in the political development of the future Jewish state (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 89–90).10 Now, opinions held by Israeli political leaders on indigenous Palestinians have changed since the inception of the state. In an article written in 1976, Middle East historian Janice J. Terry outlines the development of the treatment and attitudes by Israeli leaders of the Arab population: The first generation of Israeli leaders, such as Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, persisted in maintaining that the Palestinians did not exist, long after at least 10 On this point, they are joined by Israeli scholar Shlomo Avineri, who also praises the “critical dimension” of Altneuland as a utopian work that not only depicts “the problems and tensions faced by the new society,” but also which deems “the primary difficulty” as “the status of Arabs in that society.” See for instance, Shlomo Avineri, “Herzl’s vision of racism,” Haaretz, February 9, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/ herzl-s-vision-of-racism-1.269714.