Jul. 20, 2004 0:30 | Updated Jul. 20, 2004 21:40Is it racist?...

Jul. 20, 2004 0:30 | Updated Jul. 20, 2004 21:40
Is it racist?

The cabinet voted this week to extend for six months a law blocking Israeli citizenship from Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens. Faced with legal challenges and accusations of racism from local and international advocacy groups, the government has sought to portray the law as purely a security measure. This stance unfortunately concedes the critics' baseless charge, while stripping Israel of the rights other liberal democracies routinely accord themselves under much less trying circumstances.

The current restrictions took effect as a temporary measure in April 2002, after a suicide bombing killed 15 Israelis and wounded more than 40. The Hamas terrorist who carried out the attack had become a citizen by marrying an Israeli Arab.

The new restrictions seem to have had a security impact. General Security Services head Avi Dichter has testified that from the beginning of the current offensive until the new law took effect, 26 Palestinians who had married Israelis were involved in terrorist attacks – compared to only two subsequent cases. Dichter points out that terrorist groups try hard to recruit from among Palestinians who move to Israel, and that their access and mobility will be an even greater asset the more the security fence is completed.

The cabinet tasked Interior Minister Avraham Poraz with drafting a new law that would grant citizenship through marriage to Palestinian women (so long as their family was not involved in terror), men over the age 35, and couples already in Israel with unresolved status. These modifications are clearly designed to highlight the security rationale behind the law, since all the favored categories carry a lower security risk.

The emphasis on the direct threat of importing terrorists is understandable as far as it goes, since Israel has a strong case in this sphere. But to those who accuse Israel of "racism," all it says is that we have a right to be racist in the name of security. In fact, the entire racism charge is bogus and we should not be dignifying it with our implicit acceptance.

Nation-states give preference to their nationals; that is what they do. All over the world, liberal democracies – not to mention states with fewer compunctions – choose who they wish to become citizens using many different criteria.

Denmark, according to the Economist, has adopted the most stringent immigration restrictions in Europe on openly ethnic grounds. As a result, family reunification applications have dropped from 13,000 in 2001 to less than 5,000 in 2003. And until quite recently, Germany had stringent citizenship criteria that discriminated in favor of "ethnic Germans" against non-Germans, such as Turks who had been living in Germany for generations.

Though many countries, such as the United States, discriminate between applicants for citizenship on economic grounds, such distinctions can be portrayed as ethnic or even racial restrictions in disguise, since they disproportionately affect certain countries.

But even these examples understate Israel's case both in terms of alleged discrimination and its justification.

One cannot convert into the German nation or the French nation, but one can, by choice, join the Jewish nation.

The Jewish people are not a race, as a glimpse at even a small group of Israelis will attest. It is not possible to join or leave a race or an ethnic group, but essentially anyone can not only become a Jew, but through doing so immigrate and become an Israeli citizen. (I don't agree with the comment about Jews not being a race.....Snooker)

Nor does Israel pretend to be a universalist nation, defined only in geographic terms and open to anyone it believes will advance its interests. Israel is a Jewish state, in which non-Jewish minorities enjoy full democratic rights.

While France can continue to be France even if its religious makeup changes, Israel cannot stay a Jewish state without paying attention to its demography.

Since 1994, "family reunification" under Israeli law has allowed about 100,000 Palestinians to immigrate to Israel, in addition to many Palestinians who have moved here illegally. Israel is under no moral obligation to allow this undermining of its demographic balance – which is not just a matter of character, but survival – to continue.

Even if the immigrating Palestinians posed no terrorist threat, we would need such restrictions on demographic grounds.

If this is racism, then the idea of the Jewish state is racist – a thought that may have crossed the minds of those who level such a charge.