Several days before the centenary celebrations of the Balfour Declaration that recognized the Jewish people’s right to a national home, a ruckus erupted over the absence of the word “Zionism” from the platform of the leftist Meretz Party. Leaders of this small party twisted themselves into knots trying to grab the stick at both ends: to assuage the concerns of its Jewish voters who define themselves as members of the “Zionist left” and to appease its Arab minority members who cannot bring themselves to sing the lyrics of an anthem that describes “a Jewish soul yearning.” The intense focus on the alleged “denial of Zionism” by the tiny opposition party swept under the carpet the government’s persistent denial of the foundations of Zionism.

Needless to say, an abyss lies between the outrageous warning by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on election day in 2015 against the “Arabs flocking in droves to the ballot boxes" and the Declaration of Independence. That 1948 founding Zionist document clearly states that Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Netanyahu’s refusal to include the word “equality” in the text of the Nationality law (emphasizing Israel’s Jewish character) that he is trying so hard to promote proves beyond a doubt that his apology to a group of Arab “dignitaries” — Israeli-Arab leaders hand-picked by Netanyahu’s associates for the occasion — over his despicable election-day ploy was in itself a reprehensible exercise in public relations.

Its attitude toward the country’s Arab minority is not the only way the Israeli government tramples the principle of religious equality. The Declaration of Independence states that the Holocaust “was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew.” However, the Israeli establishment at all levels widely opens the gates only to those considered Jewish according to the principles of Orthodox Judaism. Israel does not recognize the marriage of a Jewish man to a woman converted to Judaism by a Conservative rather than an Orthodox rabbi, or, heaven forbid, by a female Reform rabbi. Even at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the remnants of the ancient Jewish Temple sacred to Jews throughout the world, women are banned from donning a prayer shawl and saying the Kaddish (the mourner’s prayer).

It’s been almost two years since the government approved the establishment of an egalitarian prayer section for men and women at the southern end of the Western Wall for use by Jews of the Conservative and Reform persuasions. However, strong pressure by the ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition convinced the government to go back on the commitment it made to a coalition of liberal Jewish groups in Israel and the United States, where they constitute a clear majority in the Jewish communities. The CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Steven Wernick, slammed the government’s reneging on its decision as “a betrayal of US Jewry.” During a Nov. 1 debate in the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, Rabbi Noa Sattath, one of the heads of the Reform movement in Israel, announced that the movement would not meet with the prime minister until it is convinced of his intention to fulfill the commitment he made.