150 French Jews move to Israel

Some 150 French Jews have moved into an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to Arutz Sheva.

The settlers landed on Tuesday night as part of a programme by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the second such arrival this month. Last week, 200 settlers arrived at Ben Gurion Airport; the largest group scheduled to arrive this summer.

Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan congratulated Tuesday’s arrivals.

“You have done the most Zionist thing. You left your families, homes, and language to move to Israel,” he said.

Read: Expel 100,000 Palestinians and annex settlement says Israeli Minister

Israeli Immigration Minister Sofa Landver has also hailed the continued arrival of French Jews as “a Zionist and principled Aliya [Jewish immigration] that has contributed and will continue to contribute greatly to the State of Israel.”

Another 70 immigrants are expected to arrive later this summer, they will settle in the town of Yakir, another illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

#Settlement 

French Jewish immigration has surged since 2012 with a record of 7,800 people settling in Israel in 2015 alone. Over ten per cent of the Jewish community in France have moved to Israel since 2000, half in the past five years, according to the Jewish Agency.

Earlier this month, the grand rabbi of the orthodox Satmar Hassidic group in New York called for Jews not to settle in Israel because the state was secularising Jewish immigrants. The Satmar group has been fiercely anti-Zionist since its inception, and is raising money to fund Jewish community projects in France to dissuade them from moving to Israel.