"The nation-state law is important, but lacking. It would have been better if it was enacted at the conclusion of the constitutional process rather than in its middle," former Chief Justice Aharon Barak said Monday, in his first public reference to the controversial legislation.
The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People was enacted in July and aims to preserve the country's Jewish character and protect state symbols and sacred Jewish sites according to Jewish tradition.
The law has come under harsh criticism for being discriminatory against Israel's minorities.
"I have no inherent objection to the law itself, but the way it was drafted and passed was very wrong," Barak, who is often credited with ushering in a constitutional revolution, told a conference in central Israel.
Commenting on claims by the law's opponents that it is discriminatory, Barak said, "My basic premise is that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
"I find the first article in the law [that Israel is the national home of the Jewish people] perfectly acceptable, but there are other aspects of equality that the law does not address properly. Human dignity, for example, is compromised by it," he said.
