Let’s Rethink the Law of Return

In 1970, the Knesset borrowed some arithmetic from the Nazis. If one Jewish grandparent was enough to put you on a train to Treblinka in 1942, then one Jewish grandparent would be enough to put you on a plane to Tel Aviv.

The logic was simple: the people who hunt Jews decide who counts as one, so the country that can save Jews should apply the same criteria.

The hunters have since changed their vocabulary.

The banners say “Zionists” now. The man who murdered Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC shouted “Free Palestine.” And the new word comes with something the old one never offered: an exemption. Renounce the state, hold the sign, and you’ll be considered one of the good Jews.

Some Jews have accepted the offer and gone further. They have spent years campaigning for the Jewish state to end.

So here is my proposal: The Law of Return promises every Jew on earth a home in Israel, as a right. I think a Jew who has spent years publicly campaigning to abolish Israel should lose that automatic right. Israel could still choose to rescue him or her. It would no longer be obliged to.

How we got here

European Jewish refugees who had been held in Cyprus arrive at the Haifa port, Feb 1949 (National Photo Collection of Israel)

The Law of Return passed on July 5, 1950. Its first section is a single sentence: every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh, the Hebrew word for a Jewish immigrant. Ben-Gurion told the Knesset the law didn’t grant that right; it simply recognized one older than the modern state, the right of Jews to return to the Land of Israel.

The legislation is short.

Section 2 let the Minister of the Interior refuse a Jew “engaged in an activity directed against the Jewish people,” or one who endangered public health or state security.

A 1954 amendment added people with criminal pasts.

Citizenship came separately, through the Nationality Law of 1952, which makes every oleh a citizen on arrival.

Then the courts went to work on the details. In 1962 the Supreme Court turned away Oswald Rufeisen, a Polish-born Jew who had saved Jews during the Second World War and later became Brother Daniel, a Carmelite monk. A Jew who joins another faith, the Court held, has left the people the law was written for.

Eight years later, after the Shalit case over how to register the children of a mixed marriage, the Knesset rewrote the law. Section 4B defined a Jew as someone born to a Jewish mother, or converted, who doesn’t belong to another religion. Section 4A extended the right to children, grandchildren and spouses. In 2018, Basic Law: Nation-State gave the whole idea constitutional weight.

So the Law of Return has always drawn red lines. Rufeisen proved that a Jew by birth could fall outside it because of what he did with his life.

The question is where the line should sit now.

Why I’m proposing this

My reason comes down to one word: obliged. Israel should not be obliged to save Jews who have spent their adult lives trying to abolish it.

We tell the story of this law as if it were written only in the shadow of the death camps. A refugee program asks one question: are you in danger? The Law of Return was an invitation to the ingathering of the exiles after 2,000 years, the most ambitious thing the Jewish people has ever attempted. An invitation to build something assumes you haven’t come to burn it down.

The safe haven exists because people accepted that invitation and built a country. A haven is an airport that stays open in wartime. It’s also reservists pulled away from their kids for months at a stretch, including after October 7. Somebody keeps the promise. A Jew in Toronto or Paris who holds a right to land in Israel holds a claim on those people.

That’s what sets the antizionist campaigner apart. S/he has worked, in public and for years, to have the promise cancelled for all Jews, the frightened ones included. If her campaign succeeded, there would be no haven for anyone. I don’t think she gets to keep a private copy of the guarantee that she’s trying to void.

Jewish antizionism is old, and before 1948 it was one side of an argument about a proposal. Today it’s a campaign to dismantle a country where more than seven million Jews live. Think of a young couple. Before there’s a baby, they can argue about whether to have kids. Once the child is born, arguing that she shouldn’t exist is a very different conversation.

The law already points in this direction. Section 2 lets the Minister refuse a Jew engaged in activity against the Jewish people, a phrase that has been read about as narrowly as a phrase can be read. Read honestly, it reaches the Neturei Karta men who stood beside Ahmadinejad at Tehran’s Holocaust denial conference in 2006. I submit that it should reach further.

Israel also does a version of this for visitors. Since 2017 the Entry into Israel Law has barred foreigners who publicly call for boycotts of the country. In January 2018 the government published a list of 20 organizations whose leaders and senior activists would be turned away at the airport. Jewish Voice for Peace was, rightfully, on it. So Israel has told some Jewish antizionists they can’t visit, while the Law of Return tells the same people they can move in and become citizens the day they land.

Very few people would ever be refused under my proposal. The leadership of JVP isn’t lining up outside the Jewish Agency or emailing Nefesh B’Nefesh. Critics will call the change symbolic, and maybe they’d be right. But the Law of Return is a statute about who the state is for, and what its promise means.

The amendment

Here is section 2 with my changes. The existing law is in bold. My additions are in italics.

2(b) An oleh’s visa shall be granted to every Jew who has expressed his desire to settle in Israel, unless the Minister of the Interior is satisfied that the applicant

(1) is engaged in an activity directed against the Jewish people; or

(2) is likely to endanger public health or the security of the State; or

(3) is a person with a criminal past, likely to endanger public welfare; or

(4) has, within the five years before applying, publicly and persistently campaigned for the dissolution of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, or knowingly held a leadership role in an organization whose principal object is that dissolution.

2(c) For greater certainty, none of the following is conduct under paragraph (b)(4): criticism of any government of Israel or its policies; opposition to any law, border, settlement or military action; a religious or philosophical view that does not identify with Zionism; or membership alone in any organization or political party.

2(d) Before refusing an applicant under paragraph (b)(4), the Minister shall give the applicant written notice of the evidence relied on and at least 60 days to respond. The burden of proving the conduct rests on the Minister.

2(e) A refusal under paragraph (b)(4) shall be in writing, with reasons, and may be appealed on its merits to the District Court.

2(f) A person refused under paragraph (b)(4) may apply to enter and reside in Israel under the Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952, and the Minister may grant the application on humanitarian grounds, including danger to the person as a Jew. This subsection confers no right.

2(g) A person refused under paragraph (b)(4) may apply again as an oleh once five years have passed without conduct described in that paragraph, whether the person is then living in Israel or abroad.

Subsection 2(c) does a lot of the work, so here is who I think it protects in real life.

• Criticism of a government. Thomas Friedman has used his New York Times column for years to attack Benjamin Netanyahu’s governments, in language that makes plenty of Zionists wince. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis filled the streets in 2023 to protest the judicial overhaul. Every one of them is covered.
• Opposition to a law, border, settlement or military action. Peace Now has campaigned against the settlements since 1978. Commanders for Israel’s Security, a group of several hundred retired Israeli generals and intelligence chiefs, fought the government’s West Bank annexation plans in 2020. The protection runs to the right as well: the settlers who tied orange ribbons to their cars in 2005 were fighting their own government’s withdrawal from Gaza. A Jew who marched for a genuine ceasefire is in the same position.
• A religious or philosophical view. United Torah Judaism’s Knesset members have sat in coalition after coalition while, by long custom, taking deputy minister titles so as not to be full members of a Zionist cabinet. A Satmar hasid who refuses on principle to vote in Israeli elections holds a view. He isn’t running a campaign to end the state.

Compare the person paragraph (4) does reach: ten years on a national steering committee for an antizionist organization, and a long public record of calling for the state to end.

The amendment tests conduct. No intake clerk at the Jewish Agency should ask a 24-year-old from Montreal how she feels about Zionism, because feelings can’t be audited. Years of op-eds, speeches calling for the end of the Jewish state, a board seat at an organization whose platform is exactly that (JVP, IJV or the as-a-Jew on the SPHR board, for example): those leave a record. If the Minister can’t produce one, the applicant comes in.

I used the word “persistently” deliberately. One ugly tweet the week after a military operation isn’t a career.

In practice, it could work like this:

1. Nothing changes on the form. Today a Jew in Toronto applies through the Jewish Agency or Nefesh B’Nefesh, sends a rabbi’s letter and a police check, and sits an interview. She’d do exactly the same under the amendment. No question about Zionism gets added, and nobody signs a loyalty pledge.
2. Only a public record opens a file. The Interior Ministry would have to start the case itself, from material anyone can find: published articles, speeches, videos, an organization’s own platform and its list of officers.
3. S/he gets to answer. The Ministry sends its evidence in writing and s/he has 60 days to reply. Canadian immigration law calls this a procedural fairness letter.
4. The Minister has to prove it. If the record doesn’t show years of campaigning for the state to end, s/he comes in as an oleh like anyone else. A refusal has to come with written reasons.
5. A judge can overrule the Minister. The appeal goes to the District Court, which looks at the merits and can substitute its own decision.
6. The door doesn’t lock. A refused applicant can still ask to come as a resident on humanitarian grounds. After five years without campaigning, she can apply again as an oleh with full rights.

The hardest objection, I think, is who decides. Diaspora Jews distrust any minister who wants to rule on who belongs, and maybe they should. Things are too political these days. What if the Jew in question is a member of the Democratic Party, and the Israeli minister in charge believes that any Democrat is, prima facie, antizionist? A cabinet that can label an inconvenient critic an abolitionist eventually will.

Subsection (c) is written for that minister. Party membership, criticism of the government and opposition to a policy are excluded in the text itself. The Minister carries the burden of proof, and a judge has the last word.

The exceptions

The amendment is purposely narrow. Here is who I think it should leave alone:

Non-Zionists. There are Jews for whom Zionism simply isn’t part of being Jewish, and they aren’t trying to end anything. The Agudath Israel world has lived this way for a century, sitting in Israeli governments while declining to call the state holy. So has the Jew in Vancouver who lights candles, has never been to Israel and doesn’t think about it much. There’s an old precedent for making room. When the Jewish Agency was enlarged in 1929, its constitution split the seats evenly between Zionists and non-Zionists. The body that handles aliyah files today was built with non-Zionists at the table.

Critics. A Jew who thinks the settlements are a disaster and can’t stand the government is arguing about what Israel should do, not whether it should be (though in many cases, there’s a fine line). So is half of Israel, most Saturday nights on Kaplan Street.

Believers who stay home. Jewish antizionism has a long history. It runs from the Bund in interwar Poland to the Satmar Rebbe, with the Reform rabbis of 1885 Pittsburgh somewhere in between. Many who hold the view today are sincere. I think they’re wrong, but I don’t think they’re fake Jews, and belief alone costs nothing under my proposal. A Satmar hasid in Williamsburg who thinks the state is a theological mistake, and stays home, keeps every right he has. The man who flies to Tehran to stand beside Ahmadinejad loses his. I’m looking at you Yisroel Dovid Weiss.

People who change their minds. She’s 19 this year, chanting in an encampment. At 30 she’s frightened in Paris and has changed her mind about almost everything. We Jews call that teshuvah (repentance), and the five-year lookback exists for her.

And if the campaigner is the one in danger?

One person is left: the antizionist campaigner the amendment refuses, on the day she needs Israel.

That day is easy to imagine. On Yom Kippur in 2025, a man attacked the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester. Two Jews died. He didn’t ask anyone about the two-state solution first. In Toronto, someone fired bullets into Bais Chaya Mushka, a girls’ school, more than once in 2024, and nobody checked the students’ politics. The persecutors say “Zionist.” They shoot at Jews. Their exemption is a promise they keep.

So picture her. Ten years on the steering committee of Jewish Voice for Peace or Independent Jewish Voices, organizations that have formally declared themselves antizionist. Now the mob has found her street, her allies have remembered she’s a Jew, and she wants a ticket to Ben Gurion.

She has no right to one. That’s the whole point of the amendment. After years of telling the world the haven shouldn’t exist, she doesn’t get to claim it as hers.

What she can do is ask. Subsection (f) lets her apply like any other foreigner, and it lets the Minister say yes. It lets the Minister say no, too. Israel owes her an answer and nothing more. Actions have consequences. An oleh lands as a citizen, by right. If she lands at all, it will be by permission.

And somewhere over the Mediterranean, we can hope, she concedes the whole argument. An antizionist Jew running to Israel because she has nowhere else to go is the best evidence Zionism has ever had.