See the potential!

Annie,Oaths in general are fowrned upon in Jewish religious law, because they are taken extremely seriously, and violating them even when one has no choice is a very big deal. When oaths are required by law in Israel, e.g. in court, when taking public office, in the army, etc. religious Jews are permitted to make a declaration which is still a big deal, but less serious if one is compelled for some reason to violate it rather than take an oath. I believe the Knesset oath only requires members to say I promise .The Israeli Nationality Law from 1952, requires a declaration and not an oath, and the Neeman amendment has not changed that. The only remaining problem is whether such a declaration would be a lie (a religious sin) for those who reject the State of Israel altogether (a small minority), or for those who believe that their only loyalty is to God and the Torah. It's a problem, but not an insurmountable one. After all, even ultra-Orthodox members of Knesset promise to be loyal to the State of Israel, and Orthodox soldiers declare loyalty to the State. The democratic part might be a little trickier. That non-Jews might not wish to lie either has probably not occurred to them.In any event that is not really what any of this is about. Israeli law, from the very beginning, wished to create two distinct paths to acquiring citizenship an automatic path for Jews (as defined by the law), and a normal path of naturalisation for non-Jews discouraged and left up to the discretion of the Minister of the Interior. In fact, to this day, apart from family unification (which now excludes spouses from the OPT), Israel has no real process of naturalisation, and rejects virtually all non-Jewish immigration. For this reason, a declaration of loyalty was required only from those who follow a normal naturalisation process, as they would in any country. Automatic citizens are not really naturalised, but rather exercise an inherent right, in the eyes of the Israeli state and its Zionist ideology.The recent decision to amend the existing declaration, to include the words as a Jewish and democratic state are jingoistic sabre-rattling, meant to serve various purposes, and perhaps prepare the ground for further declarations/oaths by Israel's non-Jewish citizens (as promised and demanded by Yisrael Beiteinu), to emphasise that unlike Jews, they are there on sufferance and not by right.