Laws of Return - compare and contrast?

Actually to speak of laws of return in the plural is a bit of a misnomer because I think Israel is the only country that actually has a law called the Law of Return. Also, Israel's Law of Return is a central theme for its citizenship rules whereas citizenship of most countries revolves around being born there or born to someone who was born there or born to someone who was born to someone who was born there. The classic case of a country having a citizenship law based on having one grandparent from that country is Ireland. This is not called the Law of Return, it is called the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. It's been subjected to a potentially profound change since the beginning of this year. Now, children born in Ireland are not necessarily entitled to citizenship if they have no claim based on parentage or grandparentage. So, whereas previously if a tourist in Ireland gave birth while they were there, that child could become an Irish citizen automatically. Now that is not the case. This law, of course, is not aimed at tourists but at asylum seekers. It's a cruel law in that it could leave some children stateless and therefore in a legal limbo situation. If we take racism to be prejudice on the basis of colour, creed or origin - together with the power to enforce that prejudice, ie discriminate - then it is clearly a racist law.

Now let's look at Israel's citizenship law here, though the text of the law itself is here at the Jewish Virtual Library. The idea of the law is to allow all Jews to live in Israel. It has been through modifications and the way the law now stands is that anyone who has a Jewish grandparent can automatically become a citizen of the state of Israel. The more devious of zionist apologists use this grandparent aspect to compare Israel's Law of Return to Ireland's nationality law. They actually contrast, in fact they are diametric opposites. You see Israel has another law relating to citizenship: the Absentee Property Law (1950). This could keep the zionist apologist in sophistry for hours, even days, at a time. The effect of this law is to deny the Palestinians the right of return to their homes or indeed to their homeland. It refers to property only. The humanity of the Palestinians is secondary here. It was their land that the zionists wanted, not their labour or any other aspect of their basic humanity. I couldn't see anything in the law to say that it was directed against Arabs but then it doesn't need to do that. The law states that people must have lived in Israel, indeed in their homes, during the period 27/11/1947 - when the first planned round of ethnic cleansing began - to 19/5/1948 in order to be citizens of the state. Taking the Law of Return together with the Absentee Property Law, the people with an automatic right to Israeli citizenship are people who managed to remain in the state during the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population from 1947 to 1949 and Jews from anywhere, together with their descendants, yay even unto the third generation. Let's take it slowly, if you were in the state from shortly before its independence was declared to shortly after then you can have citizenship. The only other people automatically entitled to citizenship are people with one Jewish grandparent. It so happens that the majority of Palestinian Arabs were purged from Palestine during the crucial period. They are denied citizenship in Israel, as are their children and their children's children. This is the complete opposite of the legal position in Ireland.

A contributor to Nick Cohen's blog offered the following comment just recently:

Ireland has a Law of Return. Britain has a Law of Return. Germany has a Law of Return.

I expect other countries do, too.

This is lazy blogging by me I know. This oft repeated lie by zionists is probably all over the net but this was the last time I saw it. Frankly I don't know the UK or Germany's citizenship laws but I am fairly certain that Britain doesn't deny citizenship to natives who happened to be out of the country when Britain was engaged in ethnic cleansing. And if Germany tried that sort of thing again the outcry would be deafening. My children are Irish passport holders in spite of me not being Irish and none of the children were born in Ireland. But they have a mother from Ireland. This "from Ireland" bit is the decisive thing. This is because under international law everyone is entitled to a homeland. That is everyone is entitled to live in the country they are from or their country of origin. This is where the grandparent bit comes in. This is why Ireland's law against some children who have been born there is so despicable even without being tested in the courts. But look at Israel. To date most people who have a grandparent from Israel (ie Palestinians) are banned from Israel. All people who have a grandparent from Ireland are welcome in Ireland.

Now when the zionists realise that they can't get away with their lies about this they invoke the holocaust to say why they need a state with a Jewish majority that has to ethnically cleanse natives and enact laws to maintain a "demographic balance" of colonisers over natives. Again have a quick scroll down Nick Cohen's site to see this. For the holocaust wary zionist, the Law of Return is of paramount importance. This, for example, is Greville Janner's take on it:

During the Holocaust millions of Jews died because no country in the world was prepared to give them a refuge and a home (Ian Buruma, G2, March 19).

The right of return is a key foundation of the state of Israel. There could be no question of any Israeli government of any political persuasion reducing that commitment in any way - least of all by giving it up.
Lord Janner of Braunstone
House of Lords

Actually this letter is more hypocritical than I thought. He refers to the Law of Return as the "right of return." The "Law of Return" is simply the name of the law that froms the main pillar of Israel's segregationist structure. See more on this here. Ok here's a quick quote:

Non-Jewish citizens of Israel do not have the right to equality before the law. This discrimination is expressed in many Israeli laws in which, presumably in order to avoid embarrassment, the terms 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish' are usually not explicitly stated, as they are in the crucial Law of Return. According to that law only persons officially recognised as 'Jewish' have an automatic right of entry to Israel and of settling in it. They automatically receive an 'immigration certificate' which provides them on arrival with 'citizenship by virtue of having returned to the Jewish homeland', and with the right to many financial benefits, which vary somewhat according to the country from which they emigrated. The Jews who emigrate from the states of the former UUSR receive 'an absorption grant' of more than $20,000 per family. All Jews immigrating to Israel according to this law immediately acquire the right to vote in elections and to be elected to the Knesset -- even if they do not speak a word of Hebrew.

So wrote Israel Shahak, describing the effect of the Law of Return on the gentile citizens of Israel. The "right of return" is a principle of international law, in the Palestinian case affirmed in UN General Assembly resolution 194 1948 and reaffirmed every year since. The right of return is the basic human right of all and the specific right of the Palestinians with regard to the land from which they were ethnically cleansed.

So, can anyone point to an equivalent law in Ireland, the UK or Germany? The fact is, Israel's Law of Return is the law that makes Israel unique, not for being a state with racists, though with official sanction Israeli racists can get away with far more racist speech and behaviour than is the norm in other western "democracies," but for being, by self-definition, a racist state.

Israel's Law of Return can be contrasted but not compared with the citizenship law of any other country in the world. No other country invites people from outside of its boundaries to come and live within those boundaries and enjoy more rights than the native population.

My next post will demonstrate the sheer hypocrisy of the zionists invoking the Nuremberg Laws to defend the Law of Return.

Also posted to Lenin's Tomb.