Comments on: Free trip to Israel

By: Conrad barwa

Conrad barwa — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 01:10:04 +0000

Like Ikram, I am quite late to the discussion here but just to make a few specific points regarding some of the issues raised in the immediate comments above. I don’t like ‘laws of return’ of any type, and would hate to be the subject of one. Like Drapeto, the Indian Muslim example springs to mind. Hindu nationalists very much use the existance of Pakistan as an excuse for riots…..Jonathan is right that some riots would happen regardless, but I do think the slogan ‘Pakistan jao ya Kabristan jao’ (go to Pakistan or go to your grave) would have less appeal if there were no Pakistan. Yes and no. Yes, to the degree that this kind of slogan would not appear and the charge of dual loyalty would not arise, since there would have been no partition and only a unitary post-colonial successor state but this would not in all likelihood have reduced the levels of conflict – though they might have taken different forms than the communal riot. After all in a unitary state there would be even more mixed urban communities and regions and these could easily flare up from time to time; and communal differences would have to have resolved one way or another, the risks of violence erupting from time to time over this, could well be increased rather than decreased. This was after all, much of the basic rationale for Partition in many moderate minds on both sides of the communal divide; I am not saying that it is right or than one needs to agree with the conclusions, but it is an obstacle that needs to be faced. Certainly, within a single state the respective religious extremists would have been even more paranoid and hyperactive in stoking up passions and preventing any sort of stability. But beyond that any possible violence that a ‘right of return’ may encourage, there are other corrosive effects. One is that co-nationals may view return-eligible nationals with greater suspicion. Now that Peruvians know that Japan has a de facto right of return that protects corrupt ethnic-Japanese leaders, will a Japanese-Peruvian ever get elected PM again. I doubt it. This is a problem, though probably more of secondary one and one that would diminish over time. There will always be some businessman like Asil Nadir or crooked politicians like Shirley Porter who will take flight to their countries of origin; not much that can be done about this. A potentially more serious problem arises when any threat of dual loyalties is raised as a consequence of possessing multiple citizenship options; these I take more seriously because they can be used as a systematic way to target broad groups and also are not the result of individual choice but involuntary ascription. Of course it is not nice when your politicians can pull a Fujimori and escape elsewhere, but I think this is probably something that causes discomfort at a relatively superficial level rather than any real problems. And finally, there’s the internal conflicts a right of return (better termed a right of immigration) can pose. If I knew I was a plane ticket away from being a foreigner, I would have a hard time feeling comfortable as a Canadian. Ahh, the perennial problems of being an immigrant! Some of these pressures are bound to crop up anyway, I would imagine that adapting to territorial nationalisms that expect newly-arrived immigrants to undergo some sort of assimilation process also has an alternative set of pressures that presents itself and can extract quite high psycho-social costs. One only has to look at the experience of Western European Jews in the 19th century and the situation that many Muslim minorities find themselves in here as well to see this. A Right of Return works best when the largest diasporic communities live in states that have strong links or good relations with the mother country and where the social and political position of these communities is relatively secure. So while for many people of Jewish ethnicity in the US neo-Europes/EU might feel either indifferent or happy about it and such a link present few if any problems in their states of citizenship; it would be a different story for Chinese minorities in East Asia or Russian ones in the CAR. And a right of return may sap the vitality of a minority community by attracting the elite of the community, dooming it to economic marginality, or worse. In India in the 50s and early 60s, better educated Muslims inevitable leaked across the border to PK, leaving behind a mass of impoverished co-religionists — people who could have benefited from having a dynamic Indian Muslim elite. This is true, but then I think the problem here lies in the fact that in this particular case the right of return could only have been exercised on an insufficient basis. Even pre-1971 Pakistan couldn’t have absorbed the numbers at stake here (even if it wanted to) also I assume that the right of return rests on there actually being a political and social space for returning immigrants to occupy; this is rarely the case and countries that have seen this kind of return immigration have had real problems in dealing with it see this paper frex: Rather than rights of emigration, which only a lucky few minorities have access to, we should aim to open doors for refugees. Israel’s acceptance of Vietnamese refugees is an example of a better ‘return’ policy. I think the lesson of the Evian conference is not the Jews need a national home, but that all countries need to leave their doors open to refugees. I am not so sure about the Vietnamese case; the way I understand it was that Begin did much of it for symbolic reasons to make a point to the international community about how they shouldn’t presume to lecture Israel. After some limited absorption, of not many refugees this was quietly discontinued and the then Israeli govt started talking about there should be some sort of international conference to resolve the issue and share the burden etc. rather ironically exactly what the Great Powers mumbled at the time when Jewish emigration was an issue in the interwar period. Obviously a blanket accessibility under the UN refugee law would be the ideal solution, but in the absence of this and other unlikely things such as world peace breaking out; it is inevitable that only countries with some direct interest will be willing to accept refugees from particular conflicts/episodes of coerced migration. Do Indian Muslims have a legal right to emigrate to Pakistan? You suggest elsewhere in your post that this hasn’t been so, at least in practice, since 1971. If that’s the case, then your example in fact shows how “go back to X” rhetoric can persist even if it isn’t possible to go back to X. (It may support an argument against setting up ethnic states to begin with, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.) I am unsure about there being any formal legal right as such; though obviously such immigration would have ideological sanction. Given the internal problems of Pakistan and the ethnic+regional conflicts that these have caused, it is unlikely to be an attractive place for many Indian Muslims directly as it is little use moving from a neighbourhood where one gets scapegoated for being a Muslim to one in a different country where one gets scapegoated for being an Urdu speaker or following a minority sect etc. As for “go back to X” rhetoric well fair enough, but this kind of slogan doesn’t really have much to do with any real flight of Muslims to Pakistan – the bulk of this happened in the bifurcated provinces which saw mass rioting; so migration was less an indication of political choice or national allegiance and more a matter of self-preservation. Outside northern undivided India, there was relatively little such migration (e.g. in the South). This kind of rhetoric is a purely symbolic tool that is designed to engage in an Othering process; the other classic favourite of ‘Babar ki olad’ indicates just how far back such an artificial ‘memory’ can go in asserting its fictional claims. Hmmm. The Israeli law of return hasn’t done this to the Jewish diaspora – with the exception of the countries where nearly all Jews emigrated, olim have tended to self-select ideologically rather than economically. Israel is probably a special case in this respect, but the brain-drain effect of immigration rights would be diluted in any event by the fact that elites are mobile even without such rights. Also in the case of Israel, capital movements have tended to go in the same direction as well. Moreover, the possibility of migration here being cyclical probably leaves another route open; I don’t think it is as much of a problem for select groups which are highly mobile minorities but only a handful of such de-territorialised minorities exist. For the bulk of settled populations it can have quite regressive effects (dependent on the existing conditions of course). In any case, I’ve never felt that my right of immigration to Israel has compromised my status as an American – if anything, it has made me feel more like an American by choice. Even in the armed forces, there were many people who were dual citizens of various countries, and my latent dual citizenship didn’t affect my perceived status any more than their active dual citizenship did theirs. I think the US is a partial exception to this, since it relies on the notion of being a ‘nation of immigrants’ so heavily, even at an idealised level that what matters is not whether one is an immigrant or not but what type of immigrant. Domestic US politics fracture along specific ethnic-racial lines I would assume more than any sort of nationalistic type of divisions. Given the specific nature of the US-Israel relationship it is understandable that there is unlikely to be much by way of tensions arising over security frex; and as Israel is basically a client-state of the US what clashes occur will tend to be over tactical issues as opposed to any real differences over strategy or regional policy. I don’t think this is applicable to many other states in the same fashion at all; India and China frex, have very real strategic interests in many of their neighbouring areas and they don’t share the same kind of client relationship with many of the state that have significant Indian and Chinese minorities; so this would arise in this context and will most likely lead to further polarisation and conflict. Even if we take the US wrt these minorities, I think it is a real concern and something that needs to be thought about carefully. This leads again to the question of what a refugee is, and the answer usually has more to do with the domestic politics of the asylum country than the humanitarian situation in the asylum-seeker’s homeland. If every member of a persecuted group could be assured of asylum in a free country – or, even better, if nobody were persecuted – then I would agree that laws of return are unnecessary. But we both know this isn’t the case – people are persecuted, the bar for refugee status is set very high, and substantial influxes of asylum-seekers lead to xenophobic backlash at least as often as to acceptance. We should work to change these things, certainly, but as long as they exist, I don’t think Israel or any other country should have to ignore them and structure its immigration laws on the assumption that the rest of the world will act morally. I think this is fair, particularly given the actually existing state of relations that prevails currently. But the answer might be that even adherence to basically universally targeted legislation, such as the Convention on Refugees provides enough of a scope for any state that has historical or ethnic ties with any displaced population to accept them; without needing something like a Law of Return. The latter has other political implications than just acting as a conduit to a refuge, which is however usually its most popular justification in the public sphere these days particularly in connection with Israel. It makes rather strong claims about inheritance, historical rights to certain geographic areas and also the claim for a state to represent not just those who are legally its citizens but an entire class of designated people, without any need for their individual or collective assent (even when this is usually forthcoming). Needless to say, it is some of these that have created problems and muddied the waters here; I personally remain agnostic on the issue. I don’t see it as a moral right or necessity (this would be covered under any extension of the provisions that currently exist for refugees and other DPs) but then I don’t subscribe to a Zionist historiography so this is understandable. Certainly, I think a state has a duty to protect the safety and welfare of it citizens and should not simply rely on some wistful notion that the rest of the world will do the right thing. We have enough evidence from the past to see that this has rarely, if ever, happened. On the other hand; one comes close to a dangerous road here, as the raison d’être of a state can’t simply be to act as safe haven or fortress – it can of course be one of the main functions but will create problems if it is seen to the sole primary one. As we are far, far from the stage when any displaced persons can even rely on a handful of countries receiving any sizeable number of asylum-seekers without putting up barriers (one only needs to look at the treatment towards people from conflict zones today to see this); I don’t think that anybody can criticise a state for taking measures to ensure that its own citizens are provided for. The question arises when this is used as an excuse not to protect but for other political purposes; as we enter here the realm of politics and intentions, it becomes much harder to judge. Laws of return aren’t a complete solution – only Diaspora communities benefit from them – and, as Drapeto says, they have their ugly aspects. On balance, though, I’d argue that they are ethical measures, at least of the “lesser evil” variety. In theory, I can concede that they are a good second-best solution; but in practise I wonder whether even this is true. I mean the only cases where substantial absorption of refugees has happened, has been generally within the context of a regional conflict where populations move back to their states of origin or where their nationality is dominant. For almost all other cases, I think even a selective application of existing refugee provisions would have accomplished the purely humanitarian aims of any Law of Return; even by ethno-national states. But then such Laws are never a purely humanitarian measure; they are as much a political measure, in that they convey an assurance to remaining Diaspora overseas, accomplish some measure of national legitimation and make political demands that other states and political actors are required to respect. BTW, on the original topic of this thread, I tend to agree with Yirmi. I found these views interesting, and I have nothing directly relevant to add except that I think it is important to bear in mind that it is rare that these policies simply exist as some sort of subsidised semi-public good. When states and govts target their diasporas for this it is very much in order to obtain something from them; the underlying and main motivation is highly instrumental not altruistic – though these can overlap to a great degree. In other words, what the state is interested, is in what the Diaspora can do for it, rather than what it can do for the Diaspora. This is I am afraid a regrettable reality; what the state wants can vary from a desire to bolster its ideological position and ensure new entrants into its citizenry when it wants to expand its demographic base (which would be applicable in the Israeli case) or look for short-term capital funds, direct investment and scarce managerial and technological transfers (as in the Indian case). The way such overtures are made depends on what exactly is demanded and how urgently it is. It is wise for diasporic communities not to lose sight of this completely; since while they live outside the state, they will face the insider-outsider problem in a particular way; which means that the state will not always act with what they themselves might conceive of as in their best interests. To take one example, the case of the Indo-Fijians has been mentioned here and one can detect a very different response to the situation by the Indian state than what might have been expected; at least part of the reason owed to a desire not to upset regional relations with ASEAN states which would have looked negatively on any military intervention as well as the lack of the Indo-Fijians being a significant political constituency for the GoI. The fact that the most obvious gain of labour (mainly unskilled and semi-skilled) was not exactly in short supply in India, that there was no existential threat posed and that there is a weak consanguineous element to Indian nationalism also played a role. But this kind of calculation is true even of strongly ethno-national states, the policy of Israel towards the Argentinean junta’s persecution of its Jewish minority being a case in point.

By: armando

armando — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 17:34:24 +0000

Yeah, fair enough. I was mistaken. I assumed that European type laws were the norm, when it seems that they aren’t. (I felt that the use of military personnel was a rather poor counter example, which is why I said you were arguing in bad faith. But I spoke too hastily.) I suppose what exercises me here is that your argument would work equally well for a racist conception of nationhood. But since it seems that many states are rather unenlightened with regards to citizenship, I suppose there is little to be said in terms of a violation of generally accepted principles.

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:44:44 +0000

>Now you are arguing in bad faith. Uh, no. You were simply wrong. >I also explained that there are a great many nations You used the word “most.” >for which nationality is acquired by birth to children of legal residents Great many? Depending on your metric for “great many” 10 percent could be great many. However it’s almost certainly not true for “most.” This is not even true of industrialized countries like Japan. Take the example of Japan. Quoting the soc.culture.japan FAQ “0. If both parents are Japanese citizens then the child is a Japanese citizen; though if the child is known to have a second citizenship for some reason (such as being born in a country that grants citizenship due to place of birth) then rules for dual citizens apply. 1. If one parent is a Japanese citizen and one parent is a non-Japanese citizen, then the child is a Japanese citizen, but must choose by age 22 whether to keep Japanese citizenship or the other citizenship. The child’s choice is recognized legally by Japan. The child’s choice might or might not be recognized by the other country, so the child might choose Japan and still be a dual citizen when in the other country or maybe third countries. Until recently, this was the rule only if the father was the Japanese citizen—if the mother was the Japanese citizen, the child might become stateless as a result. But the law no longer discriminates by parent’s sex. Note: For a child born overseas, the child MUST be entered in the family registry of the Japanese parent, technically withing 30 days of the child’s birth. This can be done at the nearest Japanese embassy. 2. If both parents are non-Japanese, then the child is not a Japanese citizen. Status depends only on the laws of the countries of the parents’ citizenships, and maybe of the country where the child was born.” Any cursory check on laws regarding citizenship in nations around the world would see that the Japanese way of doing things is the norm (especially for non-Western countries). For example I decided to look up citizenship by birth in Nigeria via google. And in 10 seconds flat this is what I got. “25. (1) The following persons are citizens of Nigeria by birth-namely- (a) every person born in Nigeria before the date of independence, either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents belongs or belonged to a community indigenous to Nigeria; Provided that a person shall not become a citizen of Nigeria by virtue of this section if neither of his parents nor any of his grandparents was born in Nigeria. (b) every person born in Nigeria after the date of independence either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents is a citizen of Nigeria; and (c) every person born outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a citizen of Nigeria.”

By: armando

armando — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 15:54:39 +0000

Translation: I am right and you are wrong. Now you are arguing in bad faith. I freely admit that my hundred or so words failed to capture the complexity of the immigration policies of the entire world in all details and you found a counter example. Well done. I am sure that your statement about US policy also contains counter examples. Feel free to ignore that in the interest of point scoring, however. I explained this. I also explained that there are a great many nations for which nationality is acquired by birth to children of legal residents, in a great many cases, when they apply for said nationality. This makes Jewishness rather exceptional, not to mention problematic if I genuinely want to distinguish between Israelis and Jews – for instance, what right does a Jewish person have? I’d say that it depends on their nationality, myself.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 04:03:49 +0000

Rather than rights of emigration, which only a lucky few minorities have access to, we should aim to open doors for refugees i agree, and a point i forgot to make is focusing on laws of return as a means to safeguard minorities doesn’t do anything for minorities who have no state, or have a state in which they are for other reasons also persecuted, or who are persecuted for reasons other than ethnicity. i think the obsession with having a state as the safeguard for one’s rights has been a disaster through out the third world. is having somewhere to go the only way that people can resolve conflicts? if those poor indo-fijians had gone to india, they could have easily been persecuted on any number of grounds. do you think dalits should have their own state? what about pakistani shias? Things can get very bad for a minority without becoming bad enough to qualify them as refugees under international law, and as things stand now there’s very little that members of such a community can do. well, the us is a pretty good place for jews and the law of return allows us settlers in israel/i controlled areas. if the law of return was only about a haven for the persecuted, it wouldn’t be so problematic to me, but it’s more than that, it’s connected to a basic view of the state as belonging to a ethnicity, which has all kinds of negative impacts (from housing ownership laws in israel to the turkist guest worker issue germany had for a long time.) re:asylum seekers, it’s true that there’s callousness, but trying to use ethnocentric sentiment as an end-run around callousness is a bad idea to me. and certainly won’t work for states in which a national ethnicity is a very attenuated concept, like india.

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 03:31:23 +0000

I’m a little late here (who knew an Israel tourism post would spawn such a discussion), but here goes. Didn’t you know that it’s impossible to discuss Israel qua Israel anymore? Jonathan is right that some riots would happen regardless, but I do think the slogan ‘Pakistan jao ya Kabristan jao’ (go to Pakistan or go to your grave) would have less appeal if there were no Pakistan. Do Indian Muslims have a legal right to emigrate to Pakistan? You suggest elsewhere in your post that this hasn’t been so, at least in practice, since 1971. If that’s the case, then your example in fact shows how “go back to X” rhetoric can persist even if it isn’t possible to go back to X. (It may support an argument against setting up ethnic states to begin with, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.) One is that co-nationals may view return-eligible nationals with greater suspicion. Now that Peruvians know that Japan has a de facto right of return that protects corrupt ethnic-Japanese leaders, will a Japanese-Peruvian ever get elected PM again. I doubt it. I don’t buy this argument either; it’s not as if ousted dictators usually have trouble finding asylum, whether or not they belong to diaspora communities. As a counterexample, I don’t think the departure of certain Menem cronies to Syria has affected the electability of Arabs in Argentina or elsewhere in Latin America; from all accounts, it hasn’t even affected Menem’s personal popularity very much. And a right of return may sap the vitality of a minority community by attracting the elite of the community, dooming it to economic marginality, or worse. Hmmm. The Israeli law of return hasn’t done this to the Jewish diaspora – with the exception of the countries where nearly all Jews emigrated, olim have tended to self-select ideologically rather than economically. Israel is probably a special case in this respect, but the brain-drain effect of immigration rights would be diluted in any event by the fact that elites are mobile even without such rights. And finally, there’s the internal conflicts a right of return (better termed a right of immigration) can pose. If I knew I was a plane ticket away from being a foreigner, I would have a hard time feeling comfortable as a Canadian. Though here, Jonathan, you could probably explain the personal impact of being subject to a right of return. Ikram, you are a plane ticket away from being a foreigner. You’re an American citizen, aren’t you? In any case, I’ve never felt that my right of immigration to Israel has compromised my status as an American – if anything, it has made me feel more like an American by choice. Even in the armed forces, there were many people who were dual citizens of various countries, and my latent dual citizenship didn’t affect my perceived status any more than their active dual citizenship did theirs. Rather than rights of emigration, which only a lucky few minorities have access to, we should aim to open doors for refugees [...] I think the lesson of the Evian conference is not the Jews need a national home, but that all countries need to leave their doors open to refugees. This leads again to the question of what a refugee is, and the answer usually has more to do with the domestic politics of the asylum country than the humanitarian situation in the asylum-seeker’s homeland. If every member of a persecuted group could be assured of asylum in a free country – or, even better, if nobody were persecuted – then I would agree that laws of return are unnecessary. But we both know this isn’t the case – people are persecuted, the bar for refugee status is set very high, and substantial influxes of asylum-seekers lead to xenophobic backlash at least as often as to acceptance. We should work to change these things, certainly, but as long as they exist, I don’t think Israel or any other country should have to ignore them and structure its immigration laws on the assumption that the rest of the world will act morally. Laws of return aren’t a complete solution – only diaspora communities benefit from them – and, as Drapeto says, they have their ugly aspects. On balance, though, I’d argue that they are ethical measures, at least of the “lesser evil” variety. BTW, on the original topic of this thread, I tend to agree with Yirmi.

By: Ikram

Ikram — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 00:56:24 +0000

Jonathan wrote: [a right of return is] hardly “indefensible” – in fact, I’d call it a positive moral good – to give members of such communities someplace to go when trouble strikes. I’m a little late here (who knew an Israel tourism post would spawn such a discussion), but here goes. I don’t like ‘laws of return’ of any type, and would hate to be the subject of one. Like Drapeto, the Indian Muslim example springs to mind. Hindu nationalists very much use the existance of Pakistan as an excuse for riots. Jonathan is right that some riots would happen regardless, but I do think the slogan ‘Pakistan jao ya Kabristan jao’ (go to Pakistan or go to your grave) would have less appeal if there were no Pakistan. But beyond that any possible violence that a ‘right of return’ may encourage, there are other corrosive effects. One is that co-nationals may view return-eligible nationals with greater suspicion. Now that Peruvians know that Japan has a de facto right of return that protects corrupt ethnic-Japanese leaders, will a Japanese-Peruvian ever get elected PM again. I doubt it. (Is John Kerry eligible for aliyah? Should we worry he may pull a Fujimori?) And a right of return may sap the vitality of a minority community by attracting the elite of the community, dooming it to economic marginality, or worse. In India in the 50s and early 60s, better educated Muslims inevitable leaked across the border to PK, leaving behind a mass of impoverished co-religionists—people who could have benefited from having a dynamic Indian Muslim elite. (This changed after 1971, when Indian-Muslim emigration to PK pretty much ended.) And finally, there’s the internal conflicts a right of return (better termed a right of immigration) can pose. If I knew I was a plane ticket away from being a foreigner, I would have a hard time feeling comfortable as a Canadian. Though here, Jonathan, you could probably explain the personal impact of being subject to a right of return. Rather than rights of emigration, which only a lucky few minorities have access to, we should aim to open doors for refugees. Israel’s acceptance of Vietnamese refugees is an example of a better ‘return’ policy. I think the lesson of the Evian conference is not the Jews need a national home, but that all countries need to leave their doors open to refugees.

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 00:39:21 +0000

>Now I think you are being overly pedantic. Any set of immigration and >citizenship laws is likely to be extremely complex and contain many >exceptions. Translation: I am right and you are wrong. >My point is that Jewishness functions differently from nationality The dictionary definition of nationality: >A people having common origins or traditions and often constituting a nation Since Jewishness follows the definition, Jewishness is a nationality. >So the analogy I was making no "analogy." I typed in "nationality" in to the dictionary and - poof! - out came the definition. >between being american and being Jewish isn't perfect And the analogy between being american and being Canadian isn't perfect either. So what?

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 22:43:56 +0000

if someone is going to make an argument from authority for israeli laws, the german example is a pathetic one to take. Where's the appeal to authority? Israel was facing a refugee absorption problem in 1950 similar to the one West Germany faced in 1946, so it adopted a similar solution. The fact that the Israeli law was modeled after a German law makes it neither good nor bad; it illustrates that form sometimes follows function. i completely disagree with you — and i’ll say that the example of indian muslims shows that having somewhere to go when trouble strikes may exacerbate incidence of trouble. I'd be interested in hearing more about this; is there a particular case you have in mind to illustrate your point? I can imagine that, if diaspora community X has a refuge in country Y, people in host countries might tell its members to "go back to Y" when trouble strikes. The thing is that people will say this even if a refuge in country Y isn't available. My grandparents are old enough to remember people saying "Jews to Palestine" at a time when Palestine was closed. To take a more recent example, Indo-Fijians after the May 2000 coup were often told "go back to India" even though that wasn't an option for most of them. I'm not sure how much, if any, this would have been exacerbated if moving to India had been an option. (i have heard of a documentary on iraqis in israel who also say that the creation of israel made things worse for jews in muslim countries; this is also the opinion of jewish moroccans i know, but i don’t know enough to say). As I understand it, this is partially true - things did get worse in many Arab countries after Israel was established, but they'd been getting worse in some countries even before that. In Iraq and Syria, pogroms and anti-Jewish laws began in the early 1940s, not only because of Zionism but because of Nazi influence in Arab nationalist movements of the time. In Algeria, pogroms predated even modern Zionism. Jews were persecuted in Arab countries before 1948, but at that time they had no choice but to weather the storm in place. i think it’s fine, good, proper etc for countries to open their doors to refugees, and people with cultural connections may well prefer to go to countries in which there are many others like them, but for it to be law based on blood or religion is really ugly. Maybe so, but to my mind this is eclipsed by the far greater ugliness of another fact - that most people who aren't connected to the victims by blood or history won't lift a finger for them. The Law of Return was enacted only a decade after the Evian conference. These days, sensibilities are different from what they were at the time of Evian, and most countries grant some form of asylum to refugees. On the other hand, they only do so when conditions in the refugees' home countries are really bad, and the trend recently has been to tighten rather than expand asylum requirements. Immigration courts in many countries are actively hostile to asylum claimants, imposing virtually impossible burdens of proof and applying a de facto presumption that they are economic migrants. The EU countries approve an average of 15 to 20 percent of asylum applications and the United States rather less; their procedures are practically designed to err on the side of exclusion, and I'm familiar with several cases where American courts sent asylum seekers home to probable death. (Israel isn't any better; it approved about 6 percent of asylum applications last year, although it has suspended deportation proceedings for illegal African workers from war-torn countries.) The refugee system as presently constituted really isn't enough to render laws of return superfluous. the law of return isn’t just for refugees right? No, nor should it be. Things can get very bad for a minority without becoming bad enough to qualify them as refugees under international law, and as things stand now there's very little that members of such a community can do. Those with money can move to another country - people with money tend to be mobile regardless of the prevailing immigration regime - but those without have to hunker down and bear it. Consider Fiji again, for instance; the rich Indo-Fijians were able to go to Australia or NZ after the coup, but the poor ones (who were taking the brunt of the post-coup rioting) had no place to go. But hey, at least nobody was being racist, right?

By: armando

armando — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 18:57:27 +0000

How would you know that? That doesn’t even seem to be true. Children of US military personnel in Saudi Arabia born in Saudi Arabia aren’t considered to be Saudi nationals. Now I think you are being overly pedantic. Any set of immigration and citizenship laws is likely to be extremely complex and contain many exceptions. Now, I don’t know that much about it, but I’ll take your word for it that if a baby is born to a mother on holiday in the US then that baby becomes a US citizen, even if they immediately leave and make no claim to citizenship. But I’m sure there are exceptions and the military – whose bases are often treated as legally part of the visting nation – are probably the source of much complication. My point is that Jewishness functions differently from nationality – I still claim that a great many nations have policies where the majority of legal residents’ children can claim the nationality of the host nation as a matter of course. There are some similarities, but there are also similarities with race. And I think that we can agree that a nation that had an explicit “whites only” immigration policy would be doing something markedly different from most countries. So the analogy between being american and being Jewish isn’t perfect, though you may feel it is close enough.

By: Luc

Luc — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 05:40:11 +0000

Would either or both of these be a proper solution in your eyes? Definitely. For a description of the positions reached in the negotiations and the end of the Oslo process the following text from bitterlemons.org is of interest: http://www.bitterlemons.org/previous/bl311201ed5.html (part written by Yossi Beilin – last paragraph) Regrettably, the refugee issue has become “proof,” as it were, of the “fact” that it was impossible to reach an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, even at a time when Israel was headed by a particularly moderate government. This claim, however, is quite simply untrue. The talks at Taba were the best ever held between the parties, and the closest ever to reaching an agreement. Were it not for the fact that the talks were held at such a late stage, on the eve of elections in Israel for a new prime minister, it would have been possible to complete the Israeli-Palestinian framework agreement at the Taba talks. If we return to the Clinton-Taba guidelines, we will be able to reach an agreement on all the open issues, including the refugee problem. And the quicker we return to these guidelines, the better it will be for all of us. ~~Published 31/12/01©bitterlemons.org~~ Yossi Beilin was Justice Minister in the government of Ehud Barak, 19992001, and an architect of the Oslo peace process. I can’t escape from the impression that the current Israeli government has this exact opinion: Regrettably, the refugee issue has become “proof,” as it were, of the “fact” that it was impossible to reach an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel …

By: drapeto

drapeto — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 03:48:41 +0000

Drapeto, you do see a certain difference between the citizenship laws of the Federal Republic of Germany and those of the Third Reich, don’t you? of course, but i also see a certain continuity. and i think any case that if someone is going to make an argument from authority for israeli laws, the german example is a pathetic one to take. I wonder how many of those who are comparing Israel’s law of return to apartheid or fascism will do the same with respect to Palestine’s. well, obviously the contraversial nature of the israeli law of nature is exacerbated by the pushing out of the palestinians, but to answer your question, i’d be fine with a limited grace period of n number of years in which palestinians who were pushed into the diaspora can return, with n more like 10 years than 5000. The problem isn’t that Israel, Germany, Italy et. al. have laws of return – it’s that some countries don’t. Things tend to become ugly for diaspora populations in times of crisis, particularly if they are “merchant minorities” like Indians, Chinese, Lebanese or Jews. It’s hardly “indefensible” – in fact, I’d call it a positive moral good – to give members of such communities someplace to go when trouble strikes. i completely disagree with you—and i’ll say that the example of indian muslims shows that having somewhere to go when trouble strikes may exacerbate incidence of trouble. (i have heard of a documentary on iraqis in israel who also say that the creation of israel made things worse for jews in muslim countries; this is also the opinion of jewish moroccans i know, but i don’t know enough to say). i think it’s fine, good, proper etc for countries to open their doors to refugees, and people with cultural connections may well prefer to go to countries in which there are many others like them, but for it to be law based on blood or religion is really ugly. the law of return isn’t just for refugees right? i’ve heard that groups like the russian christians have ganked them for economic reasons.

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 01:16:51 +0000

I think that all tribal states are in a fundamental sense illegitimate and ought, at least in principle, to be reconstructed on non-tribal lines. That's certainly a respectable and ethically consistent position, but one with which I disagree. I'll refer you to my comment made here and timestamped 12:25:55 p.m. on 10/18/03:

In any event, it strikes me that a key issue here is the debate over the three basic ways a state can deal with minorities:
The individualistic approach: nobody owns the state, and the law treats everyone the same as everyone else.

The European approach: the state belongs to the majority, but minorities have legal rights to insure civil equality and maximum self-determination within that framework.

The apartheid approach: the state belongs to us and to hell with you.
The first and second options are obviously preferable to the third, but what's less clear is whether the first is preferable to the second. [The European approach has drawbacks], but the individualistic New World model also has its problems. For one thing, individualistic countries tend to be much more strongly assimilationist than those with some form of minority group rights; it is no accident that as the United States has become less assimilationist, the concept of group rights has taken greater hold. Once the idea of separate groups within the state is accepted at all, these groups will be seen as having distinct interests; conversely, if the state structure does not admit of distinct subgroups, then all will be expected to conform more or less to the societal norm. If Israel became a New World state, many of the rights Arabs have now - for instance, having state-supported Arabic-language institutions - might be in jeopardy. A second problem is that the New World model can paper over significant differences; even though the state does not officially belong to any group, it often does unofficially. New Zealand is not legally an "Anglo-Saxon state," but if you ask the average Maori - and maybe even the average pakeha - he'd probably say it is one. Moreover, because this dominance does not officially exist and cannot be officially recognized without compromising the nature of the state, it can be more difficult to control.

Perhaps a better illustration of the last paragraph is the existence of many post-colonial states that are universal-individualist in form but in fact belong to either the majority ethnic group or the president's ethnic group. This would also, I'm afraid, be true in a binational Israeli-Palestinian state - given the depth of ethnic divisions in the region, a universal-individualist constitution wouldn't prevent tribalism at the polls and in the legislature absent totalitarian Kemalist nation-building. In light of the circumstances, I think it's best to recognize and accommodate desires for national self-determination rather than trying to paper them over. If, in the future, regional ethnic rivalries become less acute or the role of the nation-state as the basic unit of political sovereignty gives way to genuine international rule of law, I might change my mind. My own discomfort with Zionism is based partly on how it (IMO) crowded out the anti-tribalist counter-tradition in the Jewish diaspora. I don't think it was Zionism that did that; it was the cataclysms of the twentieth century, and the realization that universal individualism didn't do much to protect stateless transnational communities from genocide. I'll admit to a certain wistful sympathy with the idea of universal individualism on a global scale - ethnic nationalism is uglier and based on realpolitik rather than ideals - but I don't think the conditions for its implementation existed either in 1948 or now. Given the Israeli context in may be understandable, but the refusal to take back in the refugees has created a situation in which I clearly take side with those that demand a proper solution, not some vague notion of eventual compensation. What is a "proper solution" then? I certainly don't support some "vague notion of future compensation" - I support compensation now, at the fair market value of the lost property (which is by my estimate $50 to $90 billion). I would also be receptive to a right of return with reasonable limits (e.g., capped at 250,000, conditional upon acceptance of Israeli citizenship and a background check, preference given to those with family in Israel). Would either or both of these be a proper solution in your eyes?

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 00:13:12 +0000

“But the fact that one becomes a national of most countries by being born to legal residents” How would you know that? That doesn’t even seem to be true. Children of US military personnel in Saudi Arabia born in Saudi Arabia aren’t considered to be Saudi nationals. Children of 2 white people legally residing in China aren’t considered to be Chinese nationals.

By: armando

armando — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 22:19:56 +0000

I don’t know of any other country in the entire world besides the USA which says if an illegal immigrant comes to the country and has a child, the child would automatically be a citizen. Ahh. I see. But the fact that one becomes a national of most countries by being born to legal residents exposes a difference between nationality generally and its comparison to Jewishness that you wanted to make. Perhaps you feel the comparison or analogy is tight enough. I see sufficiently many differences as to question that, myself.