Bar’s Proposed Knesset Bill Should Grant Immediate Citizenship to Holocaust Survivors

As reported in the Times of Israel on December 1, 2014, a Knesset Labor lawmaker, Hilik Bar, has proposed the following legislation: “Adopt the Declaration of Independence, with its call for equality for all citizens, as part of Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.”

Bar’s proposed bill is good because it is anchored in Israel’s May 14, 1948 Declaration of Independence. His bill will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex;” and “guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, conscience, and language, education and culture;”

Because Bar’s bill will guarantee fundamental rights and liberties of Israel’s inhabitants via the Declaration of Independence – his bill will be anchored in Israel’s MAGNA CARTA, if you will. The first Knesset vote is expected in about “two to three weeks.” Many MKs have already “signed on” to his bill.

Bar’s bill is an alternative to several hotly contested and protested proposed Basic Law bills defining Israel as a “Jewish State,” which has even “roiled the coalition” into a crisis.

IMMIGRATION FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Israel’s Declaration of Independence states: “THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles;” . . . “Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel” . . . and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.”

The Holocaust is the underlying factor for the State of Israel’s independence in 1948. The “Ingathering of the ‘Exiles’ [stateless, expelled, or barred people from their countries]” – aptly describes persecuted “survivors” of the Nazi Holocaust in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

Therefore, Bar’s bill should include a special provision for all Holocaust “survivors” and/or their children today if their names are listed in Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem.  For example: “Irrespective of religion, race, or sex, any Holocaust survivors in any country with a desire to immigrate to their national homeland in Eretz-Yisrael, whose names are listed in Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem, shall be granted immediate Israeli citizenship upon arrival at customs border control. No religious/non-religious organizations, entities, persons, or individuals, shall prohibit the constitutional right of all such Holocaust survivors to become law-abiding citizens of Israel.”

This writer’s birth name is listed in Yad Vashem. Hilik Bar’s bill then will not just be a “good” bill, but an “excellent” bill. No doubt, Ben-Gurion would approve Bar’s legislation with a smile from the grave!