Government Don't Debate Bill Proposal to Removal of Laws to Return to Grandparent Terms
Aliyah Abrace, Bnei Menashe. Laura's photos
The committee decided to debate the proposal again within a month.
The government's ministerial legislative committee debated at its weekly meeting on Sunday, with the ultra-conservative MK Avi Maoz (NOAM) proposing a bill proposal to remove the grandfather clause in the return law, which makes anyone with Jewish grandparents an Israeli citizen.
The committee decided to debate the proposal again within a month. The Israeli parliament will then be in the recess until October, so the bill is unlikely to be promoted in the near future.
An estimated 500,000 Israelis have migrated to the country since 1970, and the provision has become a source of debate within Israel and a point of friction with the Jewish community abroad.
Maoz resigned from Benjamin Netanyahu's alliance in March to protest what he said was the government's failure to put forward enough Orthodox and nationalist agenda. The Ministerial Council passed Maoz delayed the second bill for three weeks to ban discussions on gender identity and LGBTQ issues in the classroom until eighth grade and restricted it to high school students.
“The law is being exploited by many people who have established connections with Jews, traditional people”
“In his current form, even himself, sometimes even his parents are no longer Jewish, the Jewish grandsons are allowed to obtain immigration status and rights,” Moz wrote in the preamble to the bill. “This situation means that many people with connections with the Jewish people and their traditions are exploiting the law and actually clearing the law of its original intention, which is to open the doors of the country to Jews of the diaspora.”
New immigrants from the United States and Canada came to the special “Aliyah Flight 2016” on August 17, 2016 at Ben Gurion Airport in central Israel.
Other members of the Netanyahu government have introduced similar or identical bills in recent years, including Likud MP Shlomo Karhi, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and influential extreme politician Simcha Rothman. Israel’s Haredi Orthodox Party is also part of the Netanyahu Alliance and has historically opposed the “grandparent clause”.
Supporters of the grandparent clause say it insists on Israel’s identity as anyone of Jewish descent, especially those excluded by the orthodox definition. The clause was added in 1970 in part to respond to the law of Nazi Nuremberg, which marked the persecution of anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.
Many also believe that the clause is crucial to welcoming Jews in the former Soviet Union, where decades of repression prevented many from meeting the religious definition but still associated with their Jewish heritage.
Asaf Shalev/JTA contributed to this article.
