Nationalist Priorities and Restrictions in Immigration: The Case of Israel
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Gans: Nationalist Priorities and Restrictions in Immigration
NATIONALIST PRIORITIES AND RESTRICTIONS
IN IMMIGRATION: THE CASE OF ISRAEL
Chaim Gans*
It may be that the appropriate demographic objective oflsrael as a country
in which the Jewish people realize their right to self-determination is the
existence of a Jewish public in Israel in numbers sufficient to allow its
members to live in the framework of their culture. It may also be that
the appropriate demographic objective of Israel should be the existence
of a Jewish majority within it. While I discussed this issue elsewhere;
here I discuss the legitimate means for the realization of these goals.
Israel's principal means for realizing these objectives thus far has been
its Law of Return and its Citizenship Law. These laws afford every Jew
anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and become a
citizen of the State of Israel. Many liberals and left-wingers consider these
laws to be tainted with racism, because they regard any nationally-based
preference with regard to immigration to be a form of racism. In the first
part of my paper I argue against this position. I offer three justifications
for nationality-based preferences in immigration. However, the fact that
nationality-based priorities in immigration are not necessarily racist and
that there are legitimate human interests justifying such priorities, does not
entail that the specific priorities manifested by Israel's Law ofReturn and its
other immigration and citizenship policies are just. These policies in effect
mean that all Jews and only Jews (or anyone related or married to a Jew)
have the right to immigrate to Israel and to become fully integrated in Israeli
life. In the second part of the paper, I argue that these two aspects oflsrael's
immigration policies, namely, its almost categorical inclusion of all Jews and
its almost categorical exclusion of all non-Jews, are somewhat problematic.
In addition to the Law of Return, a number of additional ways to ultimately
increase the number of Jews in relation to the number of Arabs have been
proposed and even adopted in Israel in recent years. During the incumbency
of the fifteenth Knesset, right-wing Member ofKnesset Michael Kleiner tabled
a draft bill intended to encourage people that do not identify with the Jewish
character of the state [i.e., Palestinian citizens of Israel C. G.] to leave. The
Israeli Government later tabled a bill-that was eventually passed-to amend
the Israeli Citizenship Law in a manner that would deny Arabs who are Israeli
* Professor of Law, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University.
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Nationalist Priorities and Restrictions in Immigration: The Case of Israel
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