Percentage of Immigrants Leaving Each Year: Jews/Non-Jews
The judicial reform, accompanying the present government almost from its first day, has almost shunted aside all other topics, no less — and maybe more — important. The previous government succeeded in its one term to deal with many subjects, whose rectification will take a long time to accomplish.
While the leaders of the protest scream hoarsely, "democracy," they actually mean "demography." Whoever has been following it from the start, realizes that it does not deal with the judicial reform alone, but with broader issues dating many years back. The reform is not the reason sending all the demonstrators out to the streets. Granted, they have succeeded in frightening and convincing the man-in-the-street but everyone knows that if the judicial reform is dismissed altogether, the protesters will continue to mob the streets.
They are scared. They see the significant decline in the strength of the Leftist parties, the wipe-out of Meretz which was identified with the Israeli Left. And they understand that only varied wiles and tricks will help the Left to remain relevant on the political scene. This does not only relate to the leftist parties on the national scene but also to those parties identified as religion bashers and whose growth of the traditional public constitutes thorns in their eyes.
They have tried to thwart the steps of the traditional population through varies ways, including an unprecedented battle, judicially and through publicity, against the one standing at the head of the rightist bloc. Now that the judicial initiative is smoldering down, and the various "Thousand" cases against the prime minister are collapsing in the courts, one after the other, they remain with demonstrations of any kind, with "democracy' roaring hoarsely from their throats, and the sword of democracy clenched in their hands.
The Grandfather Clause of the Law of Return, passed in 1970, enabled every Jew to immigrate and settle in Israel as a citizen. The Grandfather clause determined that even one whose only connection of Judaism is through one of his grandparents could claim this right. The rationale behind this was defined as "the unification of families," enabling those who wished to immigrate to bring along their families as well. This was due to the extensive intermarriage in the Soviet Jewish community.
Since this clause enabled non-Jewish descendants to come, the swelling stream of immigrants threatened the demographic stability of the country. And thus, gentile family members kept on coming, even if their grandparent antecedent was no longer alive or had never stepped on Israeli soil to begin with, while, in fact, no member of the family had ever embraced any religious leanings to Israel or any religious sentiments towards Judaism. Most of these immigrants are thoroughly non-Jewish in spirit and in fact.
Thus, for example, in 2022 alone, subsequent to the outbreak of war in the Ukraine, some 40,000 immigrants flooded into Israel under that clause.
According to the facts, many of those immigrants coming to Israel under the Grandfather Clause, only come in order to benefit from the basket of economic absorption benefits worth tens of thousands of shekalim, including medical benefits, rental subsidies and an Israeli passport. A reliable survey shows that 41% of the new "immigrants" who came since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, do not live in Israel any more. Most of them returned to their homeland as soon as they received the "absorption" package, boasting an Israeli passport and identity card. They took the money and ran — many of them right back to Ukraine.
The phenomenon of "the tourist passport" has become more and more common in recent years. From reports in the Knesset, it appears than more and more non-Jews — as many as 1,500 to 2,000 a year, visit Israel, received the absorption benefit basket and a passport, and remain here only for a very short period, as little as a month.
"Up till 2017, whoever wished to immigrate, received only a transit certificate without a passport," says Leah Aharoni, founder and director of the "Anashim Mishelanu" organization to Yated Ne'eman reporter. This organization helps in the acclimatization of new immigrants, war refugees coming from Russia and the Ukraine, on matters of welcome and Jewish identity.
Yisrael Beiteinu sought in the past to change the situation and enable olim to receive an Israeli passport immediately upon their arrival, so as not to "hamper in their freedom of movement," she said.
