Bring Hannah Home!

The Israeli public is now quite appropriately intensely absorbed in the complex matter of returning home the remaining abductees, living or dead, held by Hamas in Gaza.  Without in any way attempting to derail or take sides in that inherently contentious discussion, this blogposting brings up the matter of Hannah Ghertner, another Israeli who needs to be brought home.

Hannah was born in Israel to American parents; her father materially participated in the War of Independence and contributed to Israel’s technological development afterward.  Hannah married an American and relocated with him back to the United States, where she raised a family.  Their household was of limited economic means, so Hannah, desirous of inculcating a love of Israel into her children, prioritized bankrolling the childrens’ visits to Israel over her own during the lean years.

In the early 1990’s Hannah’s father became ill, and she became concerned over how she would join her family in Israel to sit shiva when the inevitable happened.  Noticing that her Israel passport had expired, she visited the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta in order to re-up it.  The consular staff in Atlanta told Hannah that because she had not traveled in more than ten years, she did not deserve to have an Israeli passport, but that after her father died, she could then come back to the consulate and they would issue her a passport to enable her to go to Israel to sit shiva.  Upon asking what would happen in the event that the consulate would be closed when she needed to go to Israel, Hannah was told that she would just have to wait until the consulate re-opened for business (her father did in fact pass away on Shabbat).

And so, at the Israel Consulate in Atlanta, Hannah found herself in the position of being denied an Israeli passport, and thereby having to travel on her American passport – which states that she had been born in Israel.  This would surely cause problems upon her arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport.  The consular staff then informed Hannah that her only option was to renounce her Israeli citizenship, and that the Consulate would issue her a letter confirming her Israeli citizenship renunciation in order to facilitate her clearance for entry at Ben-Gurion.  With a heavy heart, Hannah most reluctantly did the renunciation, and was issued the confirmatory letter by the Atlanta consular staff (for which they charged her $50).

In subsequent years, as family finances permitted, Hannah herself was able to visit Israel on her USA passport, which the people at Ben-Gurion accepted upon presentation of the letter from the Atlanta Consulate.

Hannah is now divorced, living in Los Angeles, and in the grandmother phase of life. She now wants to permanently return to Israel, but the staff at the Los Angeles Consulate has informed her that because she relinquished her Israeli citizenship (never mind that the relinquishment was done under the effective coercion of the Atlanta consular staff), she needs the personal approval by Moshe Arbel, the head of the Misrad Hapnin (Ministry of the Interior).  Hannah now awaits Arbel’s decision.

Hannah’s situation stands in stark contradistinction to that of the captives being held in Gaza by Hamas.  There is no demand that Israel release anyone in exchange for Hannah, and therefore, no danger that anyone exchanged for Hannah will once again terrorize Israel in the future.  There are no foreign governments or other intermediaries involved in any negotiations for Hannah’s release, and there are no lawless rogue organizations making any demands (with the arguable exception of Israel itself).  There are no uncertainties as to Hannah’s whereabouts, nor any doubts as to whether Hannah is or is not still alive, and there are no futile implorements to the Red Cross to try to contact Hannah because Hannah can be directly spoken with and indeed, be met in person for an unfettered conversation.

Moreover, Hannah will not have any major problems integrating into Israeli society.  She has already lived here and gone to school here.  Her large family here includes three sisters who themselves have grandchildren (and even great-grandchildren), and Hannah’s daughter has already purchased an apartment here in preparation for her own Aliyah.  Hannah strongly desires to live in Israel as an Israeli citizen before being buried in the cemetery plot which she has already purchased in the land.

Bureaucrats and bureaucracies make errors.  During my career as a bureaucrat employed by the United States government I caught many bureaucratic errors; I even made a few errors myself (including one worth more than a million dollars, which I corrected by making some telephone calls to General Electric and sending out the appropriate letters and intra-agency memoranda).

The Israeli bureaucrats at the Atlanta Consulate made a grievous error by effectively strongarming Hannah to renounce her Israeli citizenship.  The bureaucrats at the Los Angeles Consulate have not found a way to correct the Atlanta Consulate’s error at their own level, but have pitched the ball over to the Minister of the Interior for him to make a decision they feel powerless to make on their own.

In light of the ever-destabilizing situation in America for Jewish people, Israel’s consular bureaucrats have to date fallen far short of the amenity, fortitude, and ethical standards set by others in their profession, most notably, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Chiune Sugihara, or Raoul Wallenberg; the records of those consular bureaucrats of other nations, who saved many Jewish lives during the Holocaust, are profiles in courage.  The name of each of these men has been memorialized in a childrens’ playground park in Petach Tikva, the city where my wife and I have settled following our Aliyah – and, perhaps in Providential irony, Moshe Arbel’s hometown.

Moshe Arbel can aspire to the levels established by Mendes, Sugihara, and Wallenberg by expeditiously approving Hannah for Aliyah.  His failure to do so would be the stuff of impudent insolence, if not a profile in cowardice.

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