Israel Moves to Protect Jewish Character of State From Immigration
February 23, 2009 Immigration, Israel
Surprisingly, Israel’s acceptance of a Nazi-influenced definition of “Who is a Jew” is not working out so well for the Jewish state.
YNET reports,
Interior Minister Sheetrit appoints special committee to discuss refining law which he says has been abused, allowing ‘people that have nothing to do with Judaism’ to receive automatic Israeli citizenship. Interior Ministry says 1 million illegal immigrants living in Israel.
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.
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.
And very disappointingly, Israel is not terribly thrilled about illegal African immigration either.
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.
Where is Progress By Pesach? Where is the ADL? Where is B’nai Brith? Where is the AJC? Don’t….don’t they care about the stranger? Aren’t they going to demand that these Jews do the right thing, and demand that Israel grant all illegal immigrants a “path to citizenship”?
I can’t believe these organizations aren’t speaking up!
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.”
What a racist, nativist bastard!
15 comments
Patrick Cleburne, in his response to your blog at the Vdare blog, asks why some of the liberal Jewish organizations advocate different immigration policies for the US and Israel. I suspect Cleburne’s motives here. I can’t copy the paragraph without copying the whole article, but you can see it for yourself.
My question is, what is the position of Progress by Pesach, the ADL, etc. on immigration into Israel? Is there a double standard, or do some liberal Jewish organizations also advocate similar open policies for Israel?
I could look it up myself, but you know this stuff off the top of your head, and I don’t. It’s important, because I’m guessing Cleburne is overstating his case, and it would be good to enlighten people like him, who like your blog for the wrong reasons.
I’d better clarify that. I agree there’s a double standard, but Cleburne’s phrase “what their co-religionists deem appropriate” seems smarmy, and I know for a fact that some liberal Jews, both Israeli and American, do advocate non-Jewish immigration to Israel as well. That’s why the African illegal alien situation got out of control in Israel in the first place, because of liberal Jewish support for it. So even though Cleburne cites your blog approvingly, his slick way of implying that the double standard is universal not only is motivated by bad faith, but also gives talking points to the VDare readers who know less about this matter than people like me who read about Jewish matters with more sympathy and nuance. This is a serious problem, and I hope you can address it. I do my best, but I don’t know enough.
Is there a double standard, or do some liberal Jewish organizations also advocate similar open policies for Israel?
Far-Left Jewish organizations advocate similar open policies for Israel. However, mainstream Jewish organizations DO NOT advocate similar policies for Israel.
So with them, there is indeed a double standard.
But I certainly don’t mean to sanction some of the stranger theories emanating from the likes of Kevin MacDonald.
Still, mainstream Jewish organizations want to keep Israel’s Jewish character, but seek to deny that the U.S. has any specific character. This is fact. But — there are historical resentments driving this perspective, such as anger over closure targeting Jewish immigration specifically (though not only), and worse, later refusal to reopen the gates to European Jewish refugees with nowhere to run.
And the Jewish organizations are aware of that history. But we can’t afford to continue to fight WWII. We have other problems, and they are urgent. We have to get over it, or this nation faces what Europe is facing, and our community faces what the European Jewish communities face.
I’m guessing Cleburne is overstating his case
The question of how significant the Jewish role is in blocking immigration is a good question. But they do make a hell of a lot of noise, and are quite arrogant and duplicitous about it.
The founding principle of America was to provide a haven to all peoples of the world fleeing oppression. Hence the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.
The founding principle of Israel was to provide a haven to all Jews of the world feeling oppression. Hence the Law of Return.
You cannot apply American norms and standards to Israel. If one swamps America with African refugees, then as long as governmental structure and societal principles do not change, America is still America.
Swamp Israel with non-Jews and the essentially nature of the country does change. Israel ceases to be Israel. That is the difference.
The founding principle of America was to provide a haven to all peoples of the world fleeing oppression.
Says who, Garnel? Where are you getting this from?
You cannot apply American norms and standards to Israel
And you should not apply Diaspora Jewish norms on the U.S.
If one swamps America with African refugees, then as long as governmental structure and societal principles do not change, America is still America.
Of course it will change. That’s the whole point. Look at what is happening in Europe. Look at our own cities. Do you really not see any difference between neighborhoods? Really?
Garnel, you are a perfect example of the kind of duplicity of which we speak.
First you are historically inaccurate as the statue of liberty had nothing to do with immigration. The poem was added many years later it is not an official document of any sort.
Second, you are just didactically saying Israel is a Jewish state and therefore it will change if we let non-Jews in. The real questions are are sectarian and/or states morally OK? If so, any country should be entitled to be so either officially or in response to the will of the people who live there.
And those that claim one set of rule for one place and another set of rules for another place should be exposed as the hypocrites they are.
I’d like to start a movement to have Emma Lazarus’s idiotic poem removed from the Statue of Liberty. Nothing in the founding of the US has to do with being a dumping ground for the third-world inhabitants of the world.
Israel should protect their culture and identity they’ve fought so hard to achieve. So should the US. Meddling immigration proponents who laud multi-culturalism are woefully ignorant of human history and clashes of civilizations through the ages. It’s a problem that is not going to be solved by the US or Israel by converting their majority populace into minority status.
You nailed it Joe. The Statue of Liberty was gift from France to honor American liberty. It had nothing to do with immigration. That “idiotic poem” as you so rightly put it has nothing to do with the original purpose of the statue. Now it is being used to justify the notion that the U.S. is supposed to be HMO, school district, retirement home, and correctional system for the entire third world.
Many of the loudest voices in the anti-immigration movement are the voices of racists, anti-semites, and other unsavory characters.
It is painful to find myself on the same side of the great immigration debate as the racists and anti-semites. I wouldn’t do it if the crisis was not existential.
Muslim immigrants to the US and their children will within our lifetime destroy the Jewish community of the United States, the same way they are half way finished destroying the Jewish community of France.
Muslim immigrants firebombed a JCC in Montreal and then firebombed another Jewish site in Montreal.
Very few jews in the US are paying attention to this threat. We few who are aware have almost no allies.
The UJA and the other mainstream jewish organizations are the Sonderkommandos (or perhaps the Kapos) of today. They work actively to advance the interests of the Muslim immigrants that will destroy our American Jewish Community.
So we Jews who are aware of the clear and present danger have no choice but to hold our noses and make common cause with the unsavory characters.
Eventually the anti immigration movement will gain a wider base of energized adherents, but for now we have to take any allies we can get
Abe, it’s not as bad as you think. For instance, Numbers USA is the largest and most effective immigration restrictionist group. Last year, they led the fight against amnesty for illegal aliens. These people are not racists or anti-Semites, they’re mainstream American patriots who welcome everyone who wants to help. The fringe elements who hate you and me haven’t accomplished what Numbers USA has.
[...] So the question is not on we few outspoken Jews who don’t believe this is a correct interpretation of the commandment to “Love the Stranger,” but rather, a question on the majority of American Jewish ogranizations who do claim to a Biblical mandate to love The Stranger as defined by amnesty and an end to raids. Yet strangely, they, do not seem concerned AT ALL that Israel is actively declining to do so. [...]
[...] diverse, the better. Why are whites so resistant to being displaced? Where do they think they are? Israel? “They want the immigrant workers, and they say their businesses are going to do very badly if [...]
Yes, many in the anti-immigration movement are, sadly, bigots. Yet though I am a naturalized American myself, I understand full well the difference between lawful and properly screened immigrants like me, and those who creep in and create problems.
What numbers are being let in is inescapably important. But equally so is the character of those admitted. Racists like Patrick Buchanan openly want to keep America “white.” But more enlightened persons are culturalists rather than racists.
I too agree that learning English, becoming citizens and participating in public life are indispensable. Israel was created to be the receptacle for an ancient people whose character is basically cast in stone. America, by contrast, is constantly re-inventing itself. Just after the Revolution, the majority of Americans were modified British people, sort of like Australians. Intermarriage and mixing of cultures with waves of German, Irish and Scandinavian immigrants created the new American character.
You cannot really compare Israel with America in matters of immigration.
Vivek,
The problems become more acute when a specific foreign culture threatens to dominate a region. For instance, in the Southwest of the U.S., where Hispanic culture is threatening to become dominant.
Racists like Patrick Buchanan openly want to keep America “white.”
Racists like La Raza want the country to become Hispanic. And I suspect you would concede that, correct?
Sure, many in La Raza or in the Mexica movement are as racist against Anglos as Patrick Buchanan is racist for them. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented cases of Mexican fascists in the south-west threatening or condemning Latinas for going with white or black men.
This is no less reprehensible than the KKK threatening interracial couples, and must be firmly handled by the police or the FBI.
Moreover, we need a law mandating that everyone who is permanently a member of American society has to learn English.
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