Bringing non-Jewish immigrants ... a hidden weapon with the battle of demography in Palestine

Muhammad Mohsen Wedd - occupied Jerusalem

The “Judaism of the State” project has turned into a debate between the Israelis themselves, where political forums, rabbis and religious Zionism witness an internal debate, regarding official data indicating that six out of every seven immigrants who were recruited are not Jews, do not meet the conditions of the “Law of Return” and have no connection Of Judaism.

According to official statistics of the Population and Immigration Department of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, 86% of the immigrants who came to Israel from 2012 to 2019 are not Jews, which means that they cannot marry or divorce the main rabbinate in Israel, since they are registered in the official records that there is no religion for them.

Statistics issued by the Jewish Agency also showed that from the beginning of 2010 to December 2019, about 255 thousand Jews immigrated to Israel, from 150 countries exported by Russia, Ukraine, France, the United States and Ethiopia, while in 2019 it ended with the recruitment of 34 thousand immigrants.

The official data of the Ministry of the Interior shows that among the 180,000 immigrants who arrived in Israel from 2012 to the present day and obtained Israeli citizenship, only 25,375 make up 14% of the immigrants who believe in the Jewish religion.

The Law of Return
Statistics revealed that more than 15,000 of the 180,000 immigrants are not Jews, have no religion or convert to another religion - mostly Christianity - they were brought to Israel under the "Law of Return" that allows any Jew in the world to come to historic Palestine, and obtain Israeli citizenship In addition to the privileges and facilities for housing, work and financial assistance that enable it to integrate into Israeli society.

In an effort to reduce the intensity of the debate and debate in Israeli society and not to go into depth with the reality of these data, the Department of Population and Immigration announced the return of the statistics.

She said that the percentage of non-Jews from the total immigrants to Israel during the mentioned period is only 37.5% and not 86% as it was initially published, without revealing the reason and reasons for modifying the statistics.

The Population and Immigration Department of the Ministry of the Interior affirmed that all of those who were brought into the country during the aforementioned period were of Jewish descendants or roots, and that they were descendants of two parents, one of whom was from Jewish roots even if they were without religion or convert to another religion.

She pointed out that their recruitment was carried out under the "Law of Return" to Israel, which was expanded by the Knesset to include the right to immigrate also for every child and every grandchild, and not only for a child of a Jewish mother.

Religious coercion
The newspaper "Yediot Aharonot" reported that these information about the recruitment of immigrants and the terms and conditions related to the clause of the grandson of a Jewish descendant, the path of Judaization of any person and the conversion of Judaism according to the teachings of the Torah and the main rabbis in Israel, and the law of personal status; are the focus of the main differences between the parties in the country.

She explained that these differences between the Haredi parties represented by the "Shas" and "Judaism of Hatura" parties, the alliance of religious Zionism and secular parties such as "Yesh Atid" led by Yair Lapid and the "Israel Our Home" party headed by Avigdor Lieberman, and besides the corruption files of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, prevented The formation of a secular right-wing national unity government, and pushed Israel towards a third election, to be held on the second of next March.

In defense of the "grandchild clause" that expands the circle of recruitment of immigrants to Israel, Lieberman - an immigrant of Russian origin - claims that they belong to the "Jewish people", and that they were pursued for this reason.

Lieberman explained that the attempts to disavow the immigrants who were recruited from all over the world, and strive to not recognize their Judaism, within the religious coercion and the pursuit of the Haredi parties to impose biblical teachings and the dominance of the main rabbinic religious authority over the civil statuses, and rule according to the teachings of the Torah in Israel.

Jewish character
On the other hand, opponents of the provisions that were added to the "Law of Return" to Israel for the purpose of expanding the circle of assimilation of immigrants, consider that the assimilation of these citizens in Israel threatens the religious and Jewish character of the state, a position expressed by the Minister of Interior Arieh Deri, leader of the "Shas" party.

Deri believes that maintaining this situation with the phenomenon of African migrants and foreign workers will plunge Israel into strangers and lead to a mixed marriage in the future and not to preserve the Jewish race, pointing out that the repercussions of immigration from the countries of the Soviet Union in the nineties of the last century are still interacting, and there are about half a million Migrants registered in the Ministry of the Interior as not being Jews or without religion.

Commenting on the immigration and quarreling rates about who is a Jew, political analyst Akiva Aldar told Al Jazeera Net that these internal issues and files related to civil personal status, civil marriage, religious issues, biblical legislation, attempts of religious coercion, and the struggle between secularism and the Torah are among the most important causes of the crisis of governance in Israel Failure to form a government and go to a third parliamentary election within a year.

Demographic balance
The same position was expressed by Rabbi Eliyahu Kaufman, who is affiliated with the Haredi movement, who explained that the reasons and motives for the rise in immigration rates to the country and the recruitment of groups of non-Jews and the official Israeli silence about this are essentially for the sake of a demographic balance between Arabs and Jews in historical Palestine.

Kaufman recalled what Defense Minister Naftali Bennett disclosed about a report by the Ministry of "Immigration and Diaspora", which confirms that there are about 60 million people around the world related to Zionism, Israel or Judaism, as the Jewish Agency is examining the possibility of bringing them into the country.

Kaufman explained in his interview with Al-Jazeera Net that the number of indigenous Jews according to religious and biblical law in historical Palestine is decreasing, while the number of Palestinians between the sea and the river exceeds six million Palestinians.

He stressed that the Israeli circles conceal the facts that the number of Jews between the sea and the river is less than the number of Palestinians and those who are not Jewish foreign workers and African migrants, where Israel is in the reality of the binational state.