Israel should be the state of all who live there

JfJfP statement on bill to change Israel’s Basic Law

JfJfP executive committee
December 2, 2014

JfJfP strongly objects to attempts by the Israeli state to co-opt the Jews of the world as its citizens, without consulting them. We believe that Israel should be, like all states claiming to be democracies, the state of all its citizens, not of one ethnic/religious group. We refuse to be co-opted. We are also concerned that such annexation of the Jewish world communities by the State of Israel associates all Jews with its atrocities and fuels antisemitism. We object to the ‘right’ to Israeli citizenship being extended to all Jews wherever they live, at the same time as it is denied to the Palestinian refugees who were driven out in 1948 and 1967 and to their descendants.