Israelis are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jews and Arabs, who respectively account for 75 percent and 20 percent of the national figure, followed by other ethnic and religious minorities, who account for 5 percent.
The Arab citizens of Israel form Israel’s largest ethnic minority. They are mostly former Palestinian citizens who have continued to live in what became Israel, and their descendants. The majority of Arabs in Israel now prefer to be identified as Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
Judeo-Arabic is Arabic, in its formal and vernacular varieties, as it has been used by Jews, and refers to both written forms and spoken dialects. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam, has been in some ways distinct from its use by other religious communities, it is not a uniform linguistic entity.
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) in plural and Mizrahi (מִזְרָחִי) in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim world. Mizrahi is a political sociological term that was coined with the creation of the State of Israel. It translates as "Easterner" in Hebrew.
Levantine Arabic, also called Shami, is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant, namely in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and southern Turkey. With over 54 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over the Arab world.
Judeo-Berber also known as Judeo-Amazigh, Judeo-Tamazight, and Jewish Amazigh is any of several hybrid Berber dialects traditionally spoken as a second language in Berber Jewish communities of central and southern Morocco, and perhaps earlier in Algeria. Judeo-Berber is a contact language; the first language of speakers was Judeo-Arabic. Speakers immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. While mutually comprehensible with the Tamazight spoken by most inhabitants of the area, these varieties are distinguished by the use of Hebrew loanwords and the pronunciation of š as s as seen in Judeo-Moroccan Arabic.
Sephardi Hebrew is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jews. Its phonology was influenced by contact languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), Judeo-Arabic dialects, and Modern Greek.
Mizrahi Hebrew, or Eastern Hebrew, refers to any of the pronunciation systems for Biblical Hebrew used liturgically by Mizrahi Jews: Jews from Arab countries or east of them and with a background of Arabic, Persian or other languages of Asia. As such, Mizrahi Hebrew is actually a blanket term for many dialects.
Arab Jews is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America. The term is controversial and politically contested in Israel, where the term "Mizrahi Jews" was adopted by the early state instead. However, some anti-Zionist Jews of Arab origin actively elect to call themselves Arab Jews.
Judeo-Tat or Juhuri is a Judeo-Persian dialect and the traditional language spoken by the Mountain Jews in the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan, parts of Russia and today in Israel. It belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages, albeit with heavy influence from Hebrew. The words Juvuri and Juvuro translate as "Jewish" and "Jews".
The Israeli population is linguistically and culturally diverse.(Hebrew: שפות בישראל) Hebrew is the country's official language, and almost the entire population speaks it either as a first language or proficiently as a second language. Its standard form, known as Modern Hebrew, is the main medium of life in Israel. Arabic is used mainly by Israel's Arab minority which comprises about one-fifth of the population. Arabic has a special status under Israeli law.
Baghdad Jewish Arabic or autonymhaki mal yihud or el-haki malna is the variety of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Lower Mesopotamia in Iraq. This dialect differs from the North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by Jews in Upper Mesopotamian cities such as Mosul and Anah. Baghdadi and Northern Mesopotamian are subvarieties of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.
Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is the variety or the varieties of the Moroccan vernacular Arabic spoken by Moroccan Jews living or formerly living in Morocco. Historically, the majority of Moroccan Jews spoke Moroccan vernacular Arabic, or Darija, as their first language, even in Amazigh areas, which was facilitated by their literacy in Hebrew script. The Darija spoken by Moroccan Jews, which they referred to as al-‘arabiya diyalna as opposed to ‘arabiya diyal l-məslimīn, typically had distinct features, such as š>s and ž>z "lisping," some lexical borrowings from Hebrew, and in some regions Hispanic features from the migration of Sephardi Jews following the Alhambra Decree. The Jewish dialects of Darija spoken in different parts of Morocco had more in common with the local Moroccan Arabic dialects than they did with each other.
Israeli Jews or Jewish Israelis comprise Israel's largest ethnic and religious community. The core of their demographic consists of those with a Jewish identity and their descendants, including ethnic Jews and religious Jews alike. Approximately 99% of the global Israeli Jewish population resides in Israel; yerida is uncommon and is offset exponentially by aliyah, but those who do emigrate from the country typically relocate to the Western world. As such, the Israeli diaspora is closely tied to the broader Jewish diaspora.
Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews formerly living in Libya.
Varieties of Arabic are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects as well as local native languages and dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be separate languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic.
Israeli Druze or Druze Israelis are an ethnoreligious minority among the Arab citizens of Israel. They maintain Arabic language and culture as integral parts of their identity, and Arabic is their primary language. In 2019, there were 143,000 Druze people living within Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, comprising 1.6% of the total population of Israel. the majority of Israeli Druze are concentrated in northern Israel, especially in Galilee, Carmel and the Golan areas.
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, informally known as the Nation-State Bill or the Nationality Bill, is an Israeli Basic Law that specifies the country's significance to the Jewish people. It was passed by the Knesset—with 62 in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions—on 19 July 2018 and is largely symbolic and declarative in nature. The law outlines a number of roles and responsibilities by which Israel is bound in order to fulfill the purpose of serving as the Jews' nation-state. However, it was met with sharp backlash internationally and has been characterized as racist and undemocratic by some critics. After it was passed, several groups in the Jewish diaspora expressed concern that it was actively violating Israel's self-defined legal status as a "Jewish and democratic state" in exchange for adopting an exclusively Jewish identity. The European Union stated that the Nation-State Bill had complicated the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, while the Arab League, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Muslim World League condemned it as a manifestation of apartheid.
Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum comprising various mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by Palestinians in Palestine, which includes the State of Palestine, Israel, and the Palestinian diaspora.
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