Israel seeks ethnic purity

The Spokesman-Review gives readers insight into ways Israel differs from our notions of democracy (“Israel moves to deport foreign workers’ kids,” Aug. 2). Babies born in the U.S. are citizens automatically. Babies born in Israel are evaluated to determine whether they will impair the ethnic purity of state.

Readers of Israeli newspapers will have noted other interesting differences over the past week or two. Israeli authorities have just destroyed a Bedouin village in the Negev, leaving its population homeless. In Israel, about 93 percent of the land is held in public domain in perpetuity for the use of Jews only. In the U.S., people have equal access to land and housing regardless of ethnicity.

Nor are all Jews equal in Israel. Ha’aretz carried the story of a young American Jewish woman who moved to Israel, accepting Israeli citizenship. She wants to marry, but religious authorities control marriage.

In order to marry, the young woman must document four generations of racially pure matrilineal descent. She cannot. Because her great-grandmother died in the Holocaust, the documentation for her birth and death as a Jew is lost.

The young woman is Jewish enough to become an Israeli, but not Jewish enough to marry.

Wayne B. Kraft

Spokane