So why is Jewish immigration so important to Israel that it is prepared to endanger the very Jews it claims to protect?
The reason is illustrated in the efforts of Netanyahu and the Israeli right to pass a basic law defining Israel as "the nation-state of the Jewish people."
Goals of ZionismThe aims of such legislation, echoing the major goals of Zionism, are several and related:
* To consolidate Israel's long-standing efforts to claim it is the state of all Jews around the world, conflating Judaism with Zionism and helping to silence critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semites.* To implicate all Jews in Israeli actions to Judaise territory that was seized from Palestinians, as part of Israel's efforts to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.
* To recruit more Jews to counter the so-called "demographic threat" posed by the Palestinians' higher natural growth rate, which threatens to create a Palestinian majority in the combined area of Israel and the occupied territories.
* To bolster a self-serving narrative of Israel as being on the frontlines of the clash of civilizations, in which the future of the Judeo-Christian west is threatened by a bloodthirsty Islamic east.
It was therefore entirely predictable that Netanyahu used his speech in Paris on Sunday to again characterize the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and Lebanon's Hizballah as being no different from militant jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State that were implicated in last week's attack.
They all, he said, wanted to "impose a dark tyranny on the world."
"Those who slaughtered Jews in the synagogue in Jerusalem [in November] and those who slaughtered Jews and journalists in Paris belong to the same murderous terror organisation," Netanyahu claimed.
An analyst on Israel's Channel 2 news described last week's attacks in Paris as "France's 9/11."
It is worth recalling that Netanyahu let slip in the immediate wake of the attack on the World Trade Centre his real view of that event -- it was "very good" for Israel because it would generate sympathy for its war against the Palestinians.
Fallacy of safe havenHaaretz columnist Ansel Pfeffer noted this narrative worked to Netanyahu's benefit, allowing him to refuse "to make meaningful concessions to the Palestinians since Israel is on the frontline facing the onslaught of radical Islam, and any ground given will immediately be used to launch further attacks."
Another Israeli analyst, Orly Noy, took the same view: "This helps Netanyahu promote a worldview in which there is no national conflict, no occupation, no Palestinian people and no blatant disregard for human rights."
But as Pfeffer further observed, Netanyahu's narrative that all Jews should come to Israel depends on a central fallacy: that Israel is a safe haven. In fact, statistically Jews are far safer in France than in conflict-plagued Israel.
It also forgets that at least some of Israel's power on the international stage has depended on the influence of international Jewish lobbies to pressure politicians and the media through their activism.
This was a point Rabbi Margolin alluded to. "The Israeli government must recognize this reality and also remember the strategic importance of the Jewish communities as supporters of Israel in the countries in which they live."
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