>The Daily Telegraph Friday 3 July 1998
>
>
>DNA test to prove migrant is a Jew
>
> By Ohad Gozani in Tel Aviv
>
>Israel ordered a Ukrainian to undergo genetic testing to check whether he
>is Jewish, the Interior Ministry confirmed yesterday.
>
>It sent Vladimir Gordukal, 43, for a DNA test to verify if he was the son
>of an elderly Jew who had testified to immigration officials he was Mr
>Gordukal's father. "Vladimir Gordukal's birth certificate lists an entirely
>different father's name than that of the elderly man who submitted oral
>testimony," the ministry said. "There was no other proof to link Vladimir
>to the man described as his father."
>
>However, the practice was denounced by Israeli civil rights groups as
>"extreme". Anat Skolnikov, of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel,
>said her group had received complaints and was taking them up with the
>authorities. She said: "This is an extreme measure and a gross violation of
>civil rights."
>
>Under Israel's unique immigration law, immigrants receive automatic
>citizenship if one parent or even grandparents are Jewish. Since the early
>1990s, some 800,000 immigrants have moved to Israel from Russia and the
>other former Soviet republics, to make up more than 16 per cent of the
>country's Jewish population. Israel's orthodox establishment has often
>voiced alarm at the high rate of non-Jews arriving under Israel's "Law of
>Return" and urged tighter regulations.