----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 3:41 PM Subject: Sharon vs. the rabbis
> Guardian (London) - December 31, 2002
>
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,866857,00.html>
> Sharon takes on rabbis over Jewish identity
> Rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals to Israel are not Jewish
>
> Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
>
> Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to
> become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the
> burgeoning Arab population.
>
> The prime minister's remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet
> for a ban on immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in
> the government between those who say an influx from the former Soviet
> Union threatens Israel's religious identity and those who
> increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate.
>
> The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on
> the issue by declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify
> as Jewish under religious law, which is more stringent in its
> definition than government legislation, should not be allowed to
> settle in Israel. "We prefer a Jew overseas to a gentile in Israel,"
> he said.
>
> But Mr Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said:
> "It should be possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so."
>
> Israel's establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the
> disagreement is the decade-long wave of immigration in which about 1
> million Russians and citizens of the former Soviet republics have
> come to Israel under the "grandfather clause" of the Law of Return,
> which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli
> citizenship.
>
> The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi
> definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent. Orthodox
> rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals in recent years do not
> qualify as Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual's
> mother to have been Jewish. The government estimates that 25% of all
> Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to religious law and need
> to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is laborious and
> partly because the Russian community tends to be secular.
>
> The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says
> such figures threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. "By
> the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish
> identity," he said. "A secular state will bring ... hundreds of
> thousands of goyim [gentiles] who will build hundreds of churches and
> will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see
> Christmas trees."
>
> The leftwing Meretz party reinforced the point by bringing a
> Christmas tree to the launch of its election campaign among Russian
> voters yesterday because it is part of the immigrants' "tradition".
>
> Mr Yishai and Israel's chief rabbis, Yisrael Meir Lau and Eliyahu
> Bakshi-Doron, want the grandfather clause repealed and the right of
> return limited to those who are Jews as defined by religious law.
> But Mr Sharon sees a more important demographic process at work. The
> higher Arab birthrate means that Jews will be outnumbered in Israel
> and the areas it now governs within decades. Arabs already account
> for 20% of Israeli citizens. Immigration has fallen to its lowest
> level since the end of the cold war and Mr Sharon is keen to revive
> it, even if that opens the gates to people of questionable Jewish
> ancestry. The government's view is that while the first generation of
> each wave of immigration may have difficulty embracing Israel and
> Jewishness, their sons and daughters frequently become enthusiastic
> Zionists. In the present climate, they are also often very rightwing.
>
> For political and security reasons, Mr Sharon is not about to
> alienate Russian immigrants by questioning their right to be in
> Israel. For a start the Russians, as all immigrants from the former
> Soviet Union are known in Israel, have the voting power to decide who
> governs. The latest opinion polls show that almost all Russian voters
> have swung behind Mr Sharon because of his hard line in dealing with
> the Palestinians.
>
> But while the Russians are rightwing on security and economic issues,
> they view religious conservatives with suspicion and complain of
> maltreatment at the hands of the orthodox. Many are unable to marry
> because only religious weddings are permitted under Israeli law and
> the chief rabbis refuse to recognise them as Jewish. The defence
> ministry calls up young Russian immigrants to serve in the army while
> the interior ministry denies them rights because they are not deemed
> Jewish. Some, suspected of lying about being Jewish have been
> subjected to humiliating DNA tests.
>
> The Russian community was particularly outraged when, after a suicide
> bombing at a Tel Aviv disco last year killed 20 young people, rabbis
> objected to the burial of three Russian-born teenagers in Jewish
> cemeteries because their mothers were not Jewish. The growing number
> of secular Russians has also been blamed for a rise in anti-Semitic
> graffiti in the Jewish side of Jerusalem. The government has recorded
> 500 incidents over the past two years.