Trump/Israel: Racist Jewish Ultra Hypocrisy

The New Observer
December 10, 2015

The first major Israeli reaction to Trump’s comments came from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took to Twitter on December 9 to formally reject the American presidential hopeful’s remarks, saying that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Muslims” (Twitter, PM of Israel ?@IsraeliPM,  10:14 AM – Dec. 9, 2015).

Netanyahu followed this tweet up with another remark that the “State of Israel respects all religions and strictly guarantees the rights of all its citizens.”

More outspoken was Knesset lawmaker Michal Rozin from the Israeli Meretz party, who started a petition (now signed by more than a third of the Israeli parliament) urging Netanyahu to condemn Trump’s “racist” comments and to cancel a proposed meeting with him. (The meeting has in the interim been cancelled by Trump.)

“Imagine that a country or a candidate would say entrance to Jews is forbidden. The whole world would stand up in protest, saying this is a racist anti-Semite. A racist like this has no place here among us,” Issawi Frej, another member of Meretz, told Israel Radio.

Omer Bar-Lev, from the Zionist Union, also went public with his opposition to Trump’s visit, tweeting: “As far as it depends on me, this racist @realDonaldTrump should not be welcome in the @knessetisrael.”

Trump’s comments also sparked criticism from all leading American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive, issued a statement which said: “Mr. Trump’s plan to bar people from entry to the United States based on their religion is unacceptable and antithetical to American values…In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating. We also know that this country must not give into fear by turning its back on its fundamental values, even at a time of great crisis.”

However, Israeli law—not just the comments of a would-be candidate, but actual Knesset-endorsed law—forbids settlement in Israel of Muslims from a large number of countries, including from the West bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law 5763, was first passed by the Knesset on July 31, 2003.

That law makes citizens of Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip ineligible for residency in Israel, even if they are married to an Israeli citizen.

The law was most recently extended in June 2015 (“Controversial citizenship law that bans Palestinians married to Israelis from living in Israel extended by the Knesset,” The Independent, June 17, 2015).

The extension forbids Palestinians married to Israelis from living in Israel, or becoming Israeli citizens.

Furthermore, the law also forbids Arabs who have Israeli citizenship (those who were not forcibly expelled when Israel was created) from being allowed to bring their Palestinian spouses into Israel or obtaining Israeli citizenship for them.

 

As if all this was not enough, Israeli immigration law goes even further, and specifically limits all immigration to that state to those who can prove biological—in other words, racial—Jewish descent.

Israel’s immigration laws are controlled by the “Law of Return” of 1950, as amended in 1970, and the 1952 “Citizenship Law.”

The Law of Return grants the exclusive right of entry and settlement to people who could show Jewish ancestry, while the Citizenship law determines who can qualify for Israeli citizenship.

The Law of Return uses the same definition of Jewish ancestry as used by the Nazis in the 1936 Nuremberg Laws. This is not surprising, as the German Council of Jews helped the Nazi government draw them up in order to promote Jewish nationalism and the colonization of Palestine.

The Citizenship law describes how Jews, once they have come to Israel under the Law of Return, qualify for Israeli nationality.

Israel also outlaws all marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and the legal loophole which allowed non-Jewish spouses to acquire Israeli citizenship through marriage outside of Israel was closed in 1999.

Clause 5 of the Citizenship Act is the only other avenue for non-Jews to obtain Israeli citizenship. This clause says that any non-Jew who wants to settle in Israel has to apply to the Interior Minister in person.

The law specifically does not give any guidelines for the making of such a decision, leaving it completely open to the minister’s personal discretion—and also making it legally unchallengeable.

Furthermore, the non-Jew must also have been living in Israel for at least five years before applying for citizenship—something which is impossible given the Law of Return.

A briefing paper prepared by the Jewish Tel Aviv-based immigration lawyer Ari Rosenberg, says of the Clause 5 rule that the “granting of such status is at the complete discretion of the Minister of the Interior and is rather rare.”

Furthermore, the Israeli-based Jewish immigration law firm Dotan Cohen, in a dramatic understatement, says that citizenship grants to non-Jews under Clause 5 are “rare.”

The Jews therefore know very well that letting Israel be flooded with Muslims will destroy that state—and organizations such as the ADL fanatically support Israel and this political position in the Jewish homeland.

But these same Jews oppose any attempt to create a similar policy in non-Jewish countries, such as Trump has proposed for America.

In other words, Trump’s policy of barring Muslims—for which Israeli politicians and Jewish organizations in America have so strongly condemned him—are in fact mainstream law in Israel.

All of these Jews must be aware of this fact, and once again, no other conclusion is possible except to say that this is yet another deliberate hypocrisy: one law for the Jews, and another for the non-Jews.