JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Pages 13, 88

To Tell the Truth

Israel's Unthinkable Debate: Abolishing the Law of Return

By Leon T. Hadar

Since Israel's establishment, its "Law of Return" has guaranteed automatic citizenship to any Jew who sets foot in the Holy Land. The conventional wisdom has been that while Israeli Jews may be divided over the future of the occupied territories, the relationship between religion and state, and the ties with the Jewish diaspora, all but the "lunatic fringe" were united over the need to maintain the Law of Return. It is the ideological basis of the Jewish state that secures the right of every "exiled" Jew to make "Aliyah" to the Jewish homeland.

Almost all Israelis—Labor and Likud, hawks and doves, Orthodox Jews and secularists—agreed that abolishing this Zionist creed would symbolize the end of the Jewish State as it has existed since 1948. Anyone who proposed replacing the 1950 Law of Return with new legislation providing the same immigration rights for Jews and non-Jews alike was immediately branded as "anti-Israeli" or "anti-Semitic," advancing an agenda aimed at obliterating Israel and exterminating its Jewish population. (Although there is a separate 1952 "Citizenship Law" that in theory permits the government to grant citizenship to non-Jewish immigrants who fulfill certain residence requirements, it has rarely been applied.)

On one level, the existence of the Law of Return helped Israel to project its humanitarian face, as a provider of shelter and protection to Holocaust survivors, to immigrants fleeing totalitarian Communist regimes, and to starving refugees from Ethiopia. (That this "humanitarian" project created hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees seemed to be beside the point to most Israelis and their Western supporters.)

On another level, the centrality of the Law of Return in Israeli life stemmed from existential concerns. It has been the most effective mechanism to relocate millions of Jews to the State of Israel, so as to provide it with a demographic defense vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the Arab world, and to increase its military strength and economic resources.

There is little doubt that Israel would have found it very difficult to survive if it had not been for the massive waves of Jewish immigrants who have arrived in Israel since 1948. (Again, the fact that most of these immigrants to Israel, including those who have recently arrived from the former Soviet Union, would have preferred to relocate to the United States or Western Europe was rarely discussed by those who romanticized the idea of "Aliyah.")

In fact, the Law of Return, which simply declares that "any Jew has the right to make Aliyah to the state" (with the exception of criminals and those who threaten the public's health), did ignite a major debate in Israel. It was not about the law's discrimination against non-Jews, including the original Palestinian inhabitants of the country, but about who, exactly, was a Jew.

The pool of potential authentic Jewish immigrants is depleting.

The law was amended in 1970 to provide the Right of Return not only to "pure" Jews but also to non-Jewish spouses and children of Jewish immigrants. However, many American Jews continue to criticize the Law of Return for not recognizing as Jews those who have been converted to Judaism by rabbis of Reform or Conservative congregations, with which most practicing American Jews are affiliated. Similarly, some secular Israelis have criticized the law for granting Orthodox Jewish rabbis the exclusive right to decide "who is a Jew," and suggested that the state should make that decision based on a more secular concept of Jewish nationalism.

Nevertheless, the notion of Israelis discussing in newspaper articles and in the Knesset (parliament) the elimination of Israel's Law of Return can only be compared to the idea of Americans debating abolishing the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was just inconceivable—until recently.

The current "unthinkable" Israeli debate over the Law of Return has been ignited by increasing recognition that the pool of potential authentic Jewish immigrants is depleting, that many non-Jews in the Third World are claiming to be Jews in order to move to Israel, and that the peace process could lead to Israel's integration or even assimilation into the Middle East. Members of the cabinet, newspaper editorialists and academics, all of whom characterize themselves, in one way or another, as "Zionists," are focusing on the need to re-define Israeli nationalism and on the growing realization that almost all of the authentic Jews remaining in the "diaspora" have decided against immigrating to Israel. Boaz Evron, an author and a columnist for the Yediot Ahronot daily, therefore suggests that Israel should cease defining itself as the "state of the Jewish people" and, instead, recognize its commitment only to citizens of the state. Anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who wants to immigrate into the state should be welcomed, Evron writes, if he or she fulfills certain basic requirements set by a new law.

Ending Reverse Discrimination

Professor Asa Kasher, from Tel Aviv University, in an interview with the Ha'aretz daily last year, compared the Law of Return to a form of affirmative action. The law, he said, was "a type of reverse discrimination in favor of the Jews, based on the notion that Jews had suffered discrimination in other countries and needed a state of their own." Since the state now exists and any Jew who wants to immigrate to Israel can do so, "the time has come to declare that stage in which we practiced reverse discrimination is over, and to adopt a 'normal' immigration policy," said Kasher.

Another Israeli academic, Professor Yehushua Porat from the Hebrew University, agrees with Kasher's proposal. Israeli immigration policies, he writes, like those of Canada or Australia, should be based on economic considerations, that is, the ability of the prospective immigrant to contribute to the society's prosperity, and not on religious or racial factors. Reflecting this kind of new thinking in Israel, Hanoch Marmari, a columnist for Ha'aretz, proposed recently that Israel set a target date, perhaps the year 2000, for abolishing the Law of Return.

An impetus for such proposals is the conclusion by many Israelis that, instead of becoming an asset to Israeli society, many of the Jewish immigrants, the "Olim," are turning into a burden. Frequently cited examples are the young Russian Jews who send their elderly parents to Israel, where the generous social welfare services of the Jewish state will take care of them, while the children emigrate to the United States or Canada. "We are turning into the senior citizens home of the Jewish people," argues Ora Namir, Israel's immigration and absorption minister, who has proposed that the Law of Return be amended.

At the same time, reports appearing in the Israeli press in recent weeks suggested that members of several impoverished tribes in Nigeria, India and Burma, motivated less by messianic than by economic reasons, have decided to identify with Judaism and immigrate to Israel. Many of them have apparently been encouraged to take that step by a Gush Emunim rabbi who contends that they are members of the "lost Hebrew tribes" and who wants to settle them in the West Bank. Thanks to the Law of Return, some of them already have arrived in Israel and are realizing and contributing to the Greater Israel dream in the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Not surprisingly, many Westernized Israelis, who still have problems coping with the absorption of the Falashas from Ethiopia, have been horrified by the prospect of thousands of uneducated immigrants from the Third World "invading" Israel. Indeed, some Israeli officials suggest that reports of the arrival in Israel of members of the "lost Hebrew tribes" can only inspire thousands of other potential immigrants in Asia and Africa to follow their footsteps: Convert to Judaism, and relocate from Third World poverty to the heavily subsidized First World luxury of Israel!