The UN needs to have a different obsession with
. Not one with lying about us, but an obsession with cooperating with us to improve the .
That is the context for understanding the report of a government panel -- leaked last weekend -- that proposes a revolutionary reimagining of who counts as a Jew and therefore qualifies to live in Israel (and the occupied territories).
Israel's 1950 Law of Return already casts the net wide, revising the traditional rabbinical injunction that a Jew must be born to a Jewish mother. Instead, the law entitles anyone with one Jewish grandparent to instant citizenship. That worked fine as long as Jews were fleeing persecution or economic distress. But since the arrival of 1 million immigrants following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the pool of new Jews has dried up.
The United States, even in the Trump era, has proved the bigger magnet. The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported last month that up to one million Israelis may be living there. Worse for Mr Netanyahu, it seems that at least some are included in Israeli figures to bolster its demographic claims against the Palestinians. Recent trends show that the exodus of Israelis to the US is twice as large as the arrival of American Jews to Israel. With 150 Israeli start-ups reported in Silicon Valley alone, that tendency is not about to end.
With a pressing shortage of Jews to defeat the Palestinians demographically, the Netanyahu government is considering a desperate solution. The leaked report suggests opening the doors to a new category of "Jewish" non-Jews. According to Haaretz, potentially millions of people worldwide could qualify. The new status would apply to "crypto-Jews," whose ancestors converted from Judaism, "emerging Jewish" communities that have adopted Jewish practices and those claiming to be descended from Jewish "lost tribes."
Though they will initially be offered only extended stays in Israel, the implication is that this will serve as a prelude to widening their entitlement to eventually include citizenship. The advantage for Israel is that most of these "Jewish" non-Jews currently live in remote, poor or war-torn parts of the world, and stand to gain from a new life in Israel -- or the occupied territories.
That is the great appeal to the die-hard one-staters like Mr Netanyahu and Mr Bennett. They need willing foot soldiers in the battle to steal Palestinian land, trampling on internationally recognized borders and hopes of peace-making.
Will they get away with it? They may think so, especially at a time when the US administration claims it would show "bias" to commit itself to advancing a two-state solution. Mr Trump has said the parties should work out their own solution. Mr Netanyahu soon may have the arithmetic to do so.
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