Israel: far right proposal to change racist law to block 3m ‘non-halakhic’ Jews

Changes are apparently being proposed to the racist law which has been used by Israel for decades to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland so that it also blocks non-halakhic Jews from migrating to the occupation state. The proposal is being considered by far-right, ultranationalist members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The changes could mean that as many as three million Jews who do not meet the stricter definition of being Jewish under halakhic religious laws would be ineligible for “aliyah”. This is a key concept of Zionism, which Palestinian Muslims and Christians say is racist because it preserves the exclusivist claim that only people of a single Jewish race are eligible to migrate to the Zionist state of Israel created in historic Palestine.

Read: Israel to expand Law of Return to 4th generation descendants of Russian Jews

According to Haaretz, a key demand of the religious parties in the coalition negotiations is the cancellation of the “grandchild clause” in the Law of Return, which governs eligibility for aliyah and Israeli citizenship. Under the current law, an individual with at least one Jewish grandparent is eligible to migrate to Israel and get citizenship automatically.

The religious parties are said to be concerned that too many immigrants in recent years do not fulfil the halakhic definition of being a Jew. They want to change the law so that only individuals with at least one Jewish parent will qualify as being Jewish.

Read: Talk of new proposal to ‘transfer’ non-Jews from historic Palestine

The Law of Return, which was passed unanimously by the Israeli government in 1950, originally stipulated that every Jew has the right to migrate to Israel, although it left open the definition of “Jew”. Under an amendment adopted in 1970, a Jew was defined as either someone born to a Jewish mother (the halakhic definition) or someone who converted to Judaism outside Israel. In addition, the right to migrate was extended to the child and grandchild of a Jew, as well as to the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew.

The same racist Law of Return has been used to deny six million Palestinian refugees their legitimate right to return to their ancestral home. Enacted following the ethnic cleansing of more half of the native Palestinian population in 1948, the Law of Return enshrined an immigration policy based on race alone. It grants Jews from across the world the right to settle in any part of historic Palestine, including illegal settlements, despite not having any direct connection to the land. Some six million Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their land under international law but are denied that right by Israel because of the occupation state’s racist immigration policy.

Israel’s leading demographer, Professor Emeritus Sergio Della Pergola, was reported as saying that three million people who are grandchildren of Jews would no longer qualify for aliyah if the law is changed. More than two million of them live in North America, mainly in the US.