Israeli nationality rejected
by JONATHAN COOK
Ethiopian Jewish women pray on a hilltop overlooking Arab East Jerusalem during the Sigd holiday marking the desire for a “return to Jerusalem,” on Oct. 31, 2013. PHOTO/Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images
Israel is almost certainly the only country that deceives the global community every time one of its citizens crosses an international border. It does so because the passports it issues contain a fiction.
When a border official opens an Israeli passport for inspection, he or she sees on the information page the passport holder’s nationality stated as “Israeli.” Within Israel, however, not a single state official, government agency or court recognizes the existence of an “Israeli national.”
In October the highest court in the land, Israel’s Supreme Court, explicitly affirmed that it could not uphold an Israeli nationality. Instead, the judges ruled, citizenship and nationality in Israel should be considered entirely separate categories, as they have been since Israel’s founding in 1948. All Israelis have Israeli citizenship, but none enjoys Israeli nationality.
This fiction presented to the international community is not simply a piece of legal eccentricity on Israel’s part. It is the cornerstone of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state—and much depends on it.
From this simple deception, Israel has been able to gerrymander its population by excluding Palestinian refugees from their land and homes while allowing millions of Jews from around the world to immigrate. And the same deception has served to veil a system of segregation in legal rights—a form of apartheid—between Israeli Jews and the country’s Palestinian minority, who comprise a fifth of the total population.
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs for more
The Descenders
by URI AVNERY
Those who are interested in the history of the Crusades ask themselves: what brought about the Crusaders’ downfall? Looking at the remnants of their proud fortresses all over the country, we wonder.
The traditional answer is: their defeat in the battle of the Horns of Hattin, twin hills near the Lake of Galilee, in 1187, by the great Muslim Sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin).
However, the Crusader state lived on in Palestine and the surroundings for another hundred years.
The most authoritative historian of the Crusades, the late Steven Runciman, gave a completely different answer: the Crusader kingdom collapsed because too many Crusaders returned to their ancestral homelands, while too few came to join the Crusaders. In the end, the last remnants were thrown into the sea (literally).
There are vast differences between the Crusader state that existed in this country for 200 years and the present State of Israel, but there are also some striking similarities. That’s why their history always attracted me.
Lately I was reminded of Runciman’s conclusion because of the sudden interest of our media in the phenomenon of emigration. Some comments bordered on hysteria.
The reasons for this are two. First, a TV network reported on Israeli descenders abroad; second, the award of the Nobel chemistry prize to two ex-Israelis. Both caused much hand-wringing.
“Descenders” (Yordim) is the Hebrew term for emigrants. People coming to live in Israel are called “ascenders” (Olim), a term akin to pilgrims. Probably the word has something to do with the fact that Jerusalem is located on a hill surrounded on all sides by valleys, so that you have to “go up” to reach it. But of course there is an ideological Zionist connotation to the terms.