Lieberman attempts to mobilise Jewish migration to Israel

Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called on Monday for Jews around the world to migrate to Israel in order to push the population of the Jewish state above 10 million.

Posting on his Facebook page, Lieberman said: “Jews around the world must understand that there is only one safe place for them, which is Israel.”

He claimed that massive migration to Israel would contribute to solving the country’s problems. “When there [are] 10 million Jews in Israel,” he wrote, “we will be able to solve our problems despite the unwillingness of the UN and the EU.”

Previously, several Israeli officials, including PM Benjamin Netanyahu called for Jewish migration to Israel in the wake of several anti-Jewish attacks in Europe.

The Israeli Central Statistics Bureau quotes the current population of Israel at more than eight million, including more than six million Jews and around 1.6 million Arabs. The remaining residents are either Christians or registered as having no religion.

The Jewish Agency, an official body that calls for Jewish migration to Israel, estimates the number of Jews around the world to around 13.7 million, mostly concentrated in Israel and the United States.

It says that 5.8 million live in Europe and 1.4 million live in different areas around the world.

Israeli officials have always maintained racial discrimination in their calls for Jewish migration to Israel, targeting Jews from Western countries over and above the large numbers of Jews in Africa and the global South.

Indeed, Israel is well known for its discriminatory practices against Ethiopian Jewish migrants, and Israeli officials are actively working to return black African Jews to their countries of origin at the same time they are calling for Jews in Europe to migrate to Israel.