Israel’s Law of Return is sometimes held to be racist because it confers the right to citizenship on Jews born outside Israel who may have had no previous connection with it. In posts on this blog I’ve often made the counterargument that many countries offer privileges to members of their diaspora when it comes to obtaining citizenship and in this regard I’ve pointed to the example of Ireland, of which I myself am a citizen, and stated that having just one Irish grandparent entitles any good-for-nothing from Buenos Aires or Brooklyn to an Irish passport.
Well, I’ve now found that while that’s perfectly true, the right to citizenship conferred by Irish law on those of Irish blood in other countries is actually much more extensive than I had thought. Have a look at this website - it’s an official Irish government website so I think we can take what it says seriously - and in particular note this,
Citizenship through descent from Irish grandparents
If one of your grandparents is an Irish citizen but none of your parents was born in Ireland, you may become an Irish citizen. You will need to have your birth registered in the Foreign Births Register.
If you are entitled to register, your Irish citizenship is effective from the date of registration. The Irish citizenship of successive generations may be maintained in this way by each generation ensuring their registration in the Foreign Births Register before the birth of the next generation.
Unless there’s something here I don’t understand, this would appear to mean that the right to claim Irish citizenship and the condition of citizenship itself don’t stop at the one grandparent level. They can be maintained indefinitely by people living overseas who were neither born in Ireland nor have any connection with it other than a single Irish grandparent or great grandparent or great great grandparent or great great great grandparent and so on across the generations.
All they have to do to confer this right on their children is to claim it for themselves before those children are born.
I suspect that those pro-Palestinians of the Irish persuasion will then tell you that this is a totally different kettle of fish from Israel’s Law of Return because ‘Irish’ can be a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu, or whatever. It designates citizenship and not religion. Perhaps if Israel were named Jewland, the two cases might be comparable.
You are right, only 99.99 per cent of those in a position to benefit from this law would be RC :=))
Good post, Eamonn.
well the Israeli right of return gives that right to anyone with Jewish grandparents or parents so these people wishing to become citizens can be non-Jews, they only need relatives who were born Jewish and did not convert to other religions and there are those who converted to Judiasm.
I’m not sure I’m following yuval’s meaning in his comment but I’d like to point out that in Israel it is known as “Law of Return”. “Right of return” is a Palestinian construct. A man-written law can be modified, in principle. A ‘Right’ is something that can be described as the secular equivalent of God’s commandment; it cannot be be abolished. At least this is how the Arabs, and more extensively, Muslims, regard the issue.
Consequently, no one quibbles with the validity of RoR while everyone and his cousin has something to say about the “Law of return”. As far as I’m concerned it is just another aspect of a double standard; one set of rules for all; another set of rules when it comes to Jews seeking redress.
Who would the potential Irish citizen be displacing upon his/her return to Ireland should he/she avail of that option ?
Noga, I’m taking it back!
lapsedmethodist “Who would the potential Irish citizen be displacing upon his/her return to Ireland should he/she avail of that option ?”
You seem to be implying that Jews moving to Israel are “displacing” someone else. Of course behind this assertion/question is that the Jews have no right to their own State in their ancestral homeland. Why not just say it, Mr. or Mrs. Lapsed Methodist?
I have no intention of saying whatever it is that would suit your particular predudice. The fact is that many Jews availing themselves of Israeli citizenship are doing so on lands outside the original borders of Israel and that can only be achieved through displacement. It is another thing entirely for you to argue that all territory SHOULD be considered Israel but at this moment in time that is not the case.
“Israel’s Law of Return is sometimes held to be racist because it confers the right to citizenship on Jews born outside Israel who may have had no previous connection with it. In posts on this blog I’ve often made the counterargument…”
It’s not a counterargument though, is it? Even assuming you found other comparable examples, it wouldn’t refute the claim that the Law of Return is racist. It would simply be providing more examples of racism.
“If one of your grandparents is an Irish citizen…”
The Law of Return isn’t about ‘citizenship’ - it’s about having a Jewish ancestor.
LapsedMethodist: If I recall corrrectly, hundreds of thousands of Protestants fled Ireland during the War of Independence, Civil War and earlier during the rise of Irish Nationalism.
“It’s not a counterargument though, is it? Even assuming you found other comparable examples, it wouldn’t refute the claim that the Law of Return is racist. ”
How can a law be racist if it provides a corrective to millennial injustice of racial persecution, expulsions and massacres? Is affirmative action a “racist” law? Do you think that African Americans should not be allowed to have access to what is available to the general population by being given a few incentives, that equips them with a fighting chance to catch up to what they have cumulatively lost in life, dignity and decent existence in the centuries-long enslavement, segregation and disenfranchisement?
And if you concede that other cases of racism in citizenship and immigration laws exist no less valid than in Israel’s case, why do you choose Israel-first as your target for your criticism? Why don’t you try to correct any other countries’ laws? Why start with Israel, where its Law of Return is an existential necessity much more in accordance with the values of justice than anything Ireland or Germany can claim for their laws?
So anyone in the world, including Palestinians with their insistence on judenrein Palestine, is allowed to preserve and protect and cultivate their ethnic and religious particularisms, EXCEPT FOR JEWS IN in the only state for the Jews in the world? Is that it?
Even the Jews who settle in Judea and Samaria aren’t displacing anyone. It seems that you have never in your life been to Judea and Samaria. It is mostly empty desert and empty rocky hills. Nobody is knocking on Palestinian doors and demanding they get out and leave the place for new occupants. Israel is not like your country.
This is not a reflection my my actual views, but a satirisation of anti-Zionism, which is popular in Ireland.
The IRA helped violently bring about the illegal creation of the Irish State, which was built on the mass displacement of Protestants that had lived in the region for centuries. This little ethnocracy on the edge of Europe handed its educational institutions to the Catholic Church, the only people who really benefited from the creation of the Republican regime - other than the a cligue of vile nationalists whose families dominated the country in almost all respects for decades. Members of Opus Dei in the Irish government like Michael Woods ensured the Catholic Church would get over one billion euros from the taxpayer to cover the legal costs associated with their child abuse.
The vast majority of Irish people do not live in Ireland. This racist state, that gives massive privileges to the speakers of a near-dead language - which served a useful agenda of ethnic cleansing - does not speak for all 80,000 000 Irish people. The region was ruled from England for centuries and its foundation was against the wishes of the majority in Westminister, the democratic parliament of the UK. I call for one state solution to the Irish question: One State in the British Isles!
The Irish law of return, as noted, is blind to religion, no religion, or race. My parents emigrated from Ireland and I have back African cousins there who had one Irish born grandparent. Young blacks are often chosen as Miss Ireland or “Miss County name” in Ireland and among the expat community in Britain. Few care what religion they do or don’t practice.