I, having a Jewish mother, could emigrate to Israel. A Palestinian, whose ancestors grew up in Israel and who were forced out during the 1947 war, can not emigrate to Israel. Please explain how this is not racist.
Hmm, maybe I will give it a try.
First, lets clarify the facts. There are two ways to emigrate to Israel. One is open only to Jews, while the other is no different than that of most countries. The Palestinian in your example could try the other. I would agree that, due to the enmity between sides, this maybe hard to achieve, but it is possible. The other way has to do with the badly-named 'law of return', which guarantees Jews and their descendants an (almost) automatic right for citizenship.
The law of return does discriminate between Jew and non Jews. However, this does not necessarily means that it is racist. This is part of a more general question, namely, is any type of discrimination racist. I assume your are employed. Does your employer have a policy of affirmative action hiring? If so, does this mean that your employer is racist? He is
clearly using discriminatory criteria for hiring. In my opinion, this question is intimately tied to any discussion regarding the law of return.
The rational behind the law of return is that the state of Israel should supply a safe heaven to any Jew which feels unsafe, or unwelcome, in his own country. I do not want to get into a historical discussion here, but Jews were periodically persecuted, in practically every place, throughout the last two millenia. The last century was one of the worst. To emphasize this, a comparison of the demographic of Jewish populations in 1900 and 2000, will show that almost all of the world Jewish population was driven out of their homes during that period. Prior to the establishment of Israel many suffering Jews had no where to go, as no country have shown the will to absorb then in large numbers. Due to that history, the leaders of Israel believed that one of their
duties was to allow to any Jew a place to go to in a time of need. The law of return was meant to do just that.
I do think that there is some place to discuss whether the law is sometimes misused by various Israeli governments and Jewish organizations. For instance using the law just for demographic reasons is wrong. However, I still think that until such a time when antisemitism is no longer with us, some type of such a law is needed. You may ask why? Well, without a legal framework, any attempt of Israel to rescue suffering Jews can be easily delayed/forestalled by an appeal to the Israeli supreme court. I have no doubt that there will be groups which would do just that for various political reasons.
You may also ask whether this law does serve the goal it was created to serve. Sometimes it does, as the following recent
story shows:
Bin Yisrael fell silent at this point, as revealing the details of how his family came to Israel is strictly forbidden. Israeli military classification prohibits the publication of any such details; all Bin Yisrael reveals is that following the hand-grenade incident, his wife informed him that she would not spend one more day in Yemen, and the next day Rabbi Bin Yisrael informed her that they would be leaving for Israel. He told his wife, along with his eldest daughter Esther, not to reveal this information to anyone but to say that they were all travelling to America to visit family. He sold his car for half its worth, and bought a new Yemeni oven for making bread, packed his things, and then he and the family went to a hotel in Sanaa where they awaited the signal from the Jewish Agency for Israel [JAFI]. When the family eventually arrived in Israel, they were greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by Israeli officials, members of JAFI, and members of the press. At the press conference [held there] Bin Yisrael said “Thank God we arrived safely. We are safe now. We have nothing against the Yemeni government; our problem lies only with the militants.”
In case you are interest in the current plight of Yemeni Jews, you can find more
here.
To summarize my view on this matter. The law or return does discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, and is sometimes misused by Israeli governments. However, this law stems from a long and sad history of Jewish life in the diaspora, which have shown that Jews are persecuted often. Moreover, at that times, the world typically does not give the help needed. I believe this history justifies a special rule which can allow Jews an automatic safe heaven. This is, in my opinion, somewhat similar to various affirmative action policies. This is also the reason that I have not bothered to point out that various other countries, such as Ireland and Germany have special rules of citizenship, which are not that dissimilar. (It is not that relevant to my point.)
Finally, I suspect that many of you may want to reply by raising other issues, such as some of Israel policies on the west-bank. Please refrain from doing so. Most of these issues do merit their own discussion. However, the point I was raising here is limited to the law of return, the rational behind the it, and the reason I do not object to its existence.
