Most consider changing their religion too high a price for citizenship, but then Jews throughout history were forced to convert to gain full rights, as many people in Islamic societies have had to convert to gain full rights given to the majority religion. But the fact is that every Palestianian could return to Israel and get citizenship if they were willing to convert to Judaism, which might be an interesting mass strategy :)
In that sense, Israel is not an ethnic state - since it does not require blood ties - but an ideological state in that you must pledge allegiance to a certain set of religious beliefs in order to immigrate there.
But countries around the world have far more racist immigration rules than Israel, since many people would have no right to citizenship no matter what changes in beliefs they might swear to.
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 4:27 PM Subject: RE: The nation of jews...
On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Max Sawicky wrote:
> They belong to Israel if they want to. Remember, it's not a
> race/biology thing.
Then why can't my friend Ahmed go to Israel under the Law of Return?
(My friend Siobhan wants to Return, too.) --CGE