Jerusalem – Hundreds of thousands of non-Jews have received Israeli citizenship over the past decade under the Law of Return, which has led Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit and his colleagues to believe the law should either be revised or abolished.
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A special committee, headed by Professor Yaakov Ne’eman has been appointed to discuss the sensitive issue on how to possibly amend the law, that allows all offspring of a Jew, including a grandchild, automatic Israeli citizenship.
On Sunday the interior minister told members of the committee, “The Law of Return is an anachronistic law through which people that have nothing to do with Judaism receive citizenship.”
The committee appointed by Sheetrit includes some of the top legal experts on immigration. A number of alternative courses of action will be presented to the committee besides annulling the law.
One of the alternatives is amending the law so that new immigrants do not receive automatic citizenship upon arrival, but only receive a resident status.
Only after proving, over the course of a few years, their ties to the Jewish people, knowledge of the Hebrew language and loyalty to the State, will the immigrants receive Israeli citizenship.
Redefining the Law of Return is not the only problem facing the members of the new committee. In recent days the Interior Ministry presented the members with data of some 1 million illegal immigrants residing in Israel.
According to the data, some 30% of the residents of the southern town of Eilat are non-Jews. After hearing this numbers, Sheetrit warned on Sunday, “If we do not discuss these issues with urgency, in a few years Israel will no longer be the state of the Jews, and I do not want that.
Demographic struggle
“We will decide once and for all who is allowed to live here. Anyone allowed to live here must take an oath of loyalty to the State. This is an imperative rule. Holland legislated such a law after the wave of Muslim immigration that threatened to alter the country’s character.”
Sheetrit said the demographic struggle called for the limitation of the number of non-Jewish foreigners entering Israel. Non-Jews in Israel include Palestinians entering the State by virtue of family reunification or marriage to Israeli Arabs, foreign workers, illegal labor immigrants and non-Jewish olim.
The data presented to the committee further showed that some 25,000 African infiltrators live in Israel, with only 600 of them being actual refugees from Darfur, tens of thousands of Palestinian woman married to Bedouins and allowed to reside in Israel, 16,000 Palestinian women living in the West Bank but receiving welfare from the State, and 46,000 Falash Mura Ethiopians that include many Christians.
Age limit for citizenship?
Head of the new committee, Prof. Ne’eman is aware of the responsibility bestowed upon him and his colleagues from the start of their work last weekend.
“We are, without a doubt, dealing with one of the most important issues on the agenda of shaping the face of the State,” Ne’eman said on Sunday, “We will convene every week and examine the matter in depth.”
The new citizenship and immigration laws to be determined by the committee will be based on the recommendations of a prior committee of experts headed by Professor Amnon Rubenstein.
Three years ago the committee submitted a proposal to the Interior Ministry to tighten Israel’s immigration policy.
Among other things, the committee recommended an age limit be placed on the citizenship of non-Jews marrying Israelis.
On Sunday Rubenstein told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that, “We certainly need an immigration policy that we are lacking, and the fact that this hasn’t happened yet is a serious setback.”
I wonder how those in Neturei Karta and other anti-zionist groups will remain citizens if obligated to take an oath of loyalty to the State.
Good morning isreal better late then never!
i dont think they r citizens.
remember the words “k’halacha”
Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You don’t know how long I said this. If you want nothing to do with judaism and you are not jewish, why have israeli citizenship.
Israel needs to stop being a refugee camp.
It is suppose to be a home for all Jews to be a light unto all nations!!!!
i wonder if all those who fought the Lubavitcher Rebbe thirty years ago when he struggled to amend the law of return, and he was warning that not amending the law will have catasrophic reprecussions for the jewish people as many goyim will come to live amongst the yiden, will now admit that he was right.
#4 ,
You beat me to the punch line, but I would have worded it stronger. When the Knesset decided to pasken the halacha according to the Nazi’s y”sh, that even one grandfather makes you a Jew, instead of a paskening according to shulchan oruch, a blind man could have seen it coming. So Ben Gurion got his wish, a normal country where even the Neo-Nazis are Jewish according to the law! Hashem Yerachem, for the record the NK by and large carry foreign passports.
isn’t this what the lubavitchers and the litvish had a huge fallout about?
I agree that we should expect anyone who lives in EY to pledge allegiance to the medinah. That should include both yidden and arabs. If they refuse, there should be a reasonable period of time for all those who refuse to leave the country. Its won’t be a jmor problem for many of the hareidim since most of them have foreign passports and we should have some rachmonis and give them some financial aid to emigrate. We should work with the neighboring arab states to find a way of relocating those living in EY who don’t wish to remain here and don’t wish to pledge allegiance to the medina.
In the meantime, I’m a Jew, a baal teshuva, an oleh who for money issues failed in his aliyah, and an Israeli citizen and I can’t come back home to Eretz Yisrael with my family because I don’t have enough money.
Simple. Kick out every mechallel Shabbos.
“Such “talmidei chachomim” we don’t need.”
Yes, you do. They’re the only ones with enough secular education to have jobs.