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Opinion The Law of Return does not check motives, and it should not Israel today

2022-11-28T07:02:57.906Z


The ultra-Orthodox demand to prevent the immigration of Jewish descendants by canceling the immigration of grandchildren of Jews who married non-Jews.


The Likud may accede to ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox coalition demands that it must reject for Zionist reasons. One of the most serious of them is the demand to reduce the applicability of the Law of Return and prohibit the immigration of Jewish descendants who wish to return and join the Jewish people by immigrating to Israel.

The unfortunate attempt by politicians from the left and the right to boycott the Likud led by Netanyahu failed, because masses of voters rejected the reason for the boycott and did not believe the accusations that the prosecutor's office hurled at Netanyahu.

But the boycott succeeded in limiting Netanyahu's ability to maneuver in negotiations with Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and created dependence on partners against whom he has no leverage.

Risks to the public interest, such as reducing the validity of the Law of Return, are therefore evident from the reports received on the negotiations.

Although in some respects the composition of the government may bring a blessing.

It will not have politicians who have sworn allegiance to the judicial system without criticism.

The way is open to her for a systematic reform that will stop the slide of Israeli democracy into an oligarchy of officials and lawyers.

It may reexamine the conservative policy of the security establishment towards the Palestinian Authority.

And it is permissible to hope that the subjection of Israel's strategy to orders from the US will be much less.

But the political power of the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox in the government could seriously damage the aliyah project.

Contrary to the shortness of faith and the shortness of achievement of too many, Aliya is a vital strategic interest of Israel.

The winds of war and the global economic crisis are opening important doors of hope for immigration from countries such as Russia and Ukraine, France and Great Britain, Canada, the USA, Brazil, Argentina and Australia. There is no chance and no need for all these communities to come at once, but it is possible, and very important, to cultivate a steady flow of aliyah from all these communities.

An inevitable consequence of modern Jewish life is that all these communities are very integrated among the peoples in their countries.

In very many cases, what is called in the language of condemnation "mixed marriages" is nothing more than the joining of non-Jews to Jewish families.

Through the families, many join - in varying degrees of intensity - also to the Jewish community.

And when such families immigrate to Israel, they actually intensify the process and seek to join not only the Jewish community, but also the sovereign Jewish collective called "Israel".

Outrageously, the Central Bureau of Statistics classifies such Israelis under "others" and not as Jews, even though the "law of returns" beneficiaries are nothing more than joining the Jewish people.

The ultra-orthodox demand to prevent the immigration of Jewish descendants by canceling the immigration of grandchildren of Jews who married non-Jews.

The meaning of such a ban would be a de facto ban on the entire aliyah, Jews and Jewish descendants.

Candidates for aliyah will not want to come here without their relatives, and in almost every family in these communities there are beneficiaries of the Law of Return who are not Jewish according to Halacha.

We have a great interest in taking in the entrants, the relatives of the Jews and their descendants, and not rejecting them.

In the very fact of their ascension lies the best proof of their desire to join.

Their motives neither raise nor lower.

The Law of Return does not check motives, and it must not check.

They have a family connection to Judaism, and it is appropriate to open up to them the ability to be connected to Judaism from a national point of view as well.

The orthodox rabbis in Israel fail to open the gate before them through conversion.

Haredi and ultra-Orthodox opposition thwarts the conversion of well-remembered Zionist rabbis such as Rabbi Haim Druckman. But the Zionists, who are religious, traditional and secular in their own right - a large majority of the Jewish people in Israel! - cannot accept this failure. Likud must represent them. Whoever joins their communities in Israel, joins Hereby to the Jewish people. Its children grow up in Hebrew and in Israeli culture, and the vast majority of them are citizens devoted to Israel as a Jewish state. The Likud must not give a hand in closing the door to their ilk, because by doing so it might stop Kibbutz Galvoit itself altogether.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-11-28

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