Professional Documents
Culture Documents
) Immigration and
Asylum: From 1900 to the present. Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
central to the ideology of the Zionist movement since its inception in 1897. Israel
independent state which could regulate immigration on the basis of its own laws.
actual reasons for which Jews have left their countries of origin and come to Israel
over the course of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, since the early days of the
in the ideological terms of aliyah, literally meaning “going up.” The use of this value-
laden term replaces discussion of hagira (migration) in the Israeli context where, until
more recently with reference only to non-Jewish incomers, it has rarely been used
(Shuval, 1998).
presence of 83,704 Jews in British mandated Palestine by 1922 which, at the time,
was populated by almost 700,000 Palestinian Arabs according to the first official
census. A year before the creation of the Jewish state, the census taken on March 31,
1947 showed that Jews had gone from making up 11.1 percent of the population in
1922 to 31.1 percent or 649,500 of the overall 1.95 million inhabitants. According to
official Israeli historiography (Cohen 2002), this situation had been brought about by
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five successive waves of Jewish immigration between 1882 and 1939. Until 1932
Europe, in particular Russia, Romania, and Poland. These early waves of immigration
agricultural settlement), the kibbutz, and the moshav, forms of collective agricultural
settlement. Those who arrived following 1932 focused on building the country’s
urban centers. By the end of the British Mandate (the period during which Palestine
was entrusted to the British by the League of Nations following World War One),
Jewish settlers lived in six cities, 22 smaller urban settlements and 302 agricultural
settlements, with 80% concentrated in the three largest cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
The period of 1933 to 1939 brought about a sizeable inflow from the Jewish
populations of Central Europe and Germany, fleeing Nazi persecution. Since 1933
this immigration was officially constrained under the British mandate but continued
restrictions and the Jewish Agency’s (pre-state Jewish leadership) official opposition
regarding visas and certificates for entry into Palestine in the fear of jeopardizing
official channels. Its control over entry into Palestine was opposed by a number of
sources, including Irgun Zva’i Le’umi (National Military Organization) leader Ze’ev
Jabotinsky, who advocated illegal entry in the aim of what he called “free
immigration.”
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A further period of immigration, leading to the outbreak of the Second World War, is
accounted for separately from the five earlier immigration waves and refers to the
immigration of Jews between 1939 and 1948. Apart from a small number of visas
issued under the 1939 British White Paper quota, this wave, known as Aliya Bet
by activists in the Yishuv (settlement) in Palestine together with partisans and Zionist
youth groups in Europe and the Middle East. During the period of 1945 to 1948 the
British quotas were extremely restrictive and many boats carrying Jewish immigrants
were sent back and their passengers interned in Cyprus. Zertal (1998) argues that the
instrumentalized by the Zionist leadership in its political struggle against the British.
Following the founding of the State of Israel, there was a period of mass migration
between 1948 and 1951. As Cohen (2002) points out, the demographic impact of the
arrival of nearly 700,000 Jews during this time, doubling the total Jewish population
in the nascent state and bringing it to 1.4 million, is analyzed without reference to the
some 760,000 Palestinian Arabs, most of whom became refugees in neighboring Arab
countries, and the destruction of many of their villages lasted almost two years and
took place in two waves, from December 1947 to March 1948 and from April to June
1948 (Morris 1987). In essence, the comparable figures mean that the rapid Jewish
reversal of the demographic balance between Arabs and Jews and a radical
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124,000 Jews were housed in vacant Arab homes, officially declared abandoned
property, and of the countryside across which “144 new Jewish communities were
established, many of them on or near destroyed Arab villages (Cohen 2002, 37).”
The period 1948-1951 was also characterized by a shift in the demography of the
While many of those to immigrate after May 15, 1948 were European Holocaust
survivors, by 1951, the percentage of Mizrahim (Oriental Jews) from Asia and Africa
had increased from 12% to 33%, some 300,000 individuals (Cohen 2002; Dominitz
1999). The very mission of the new state was based on the principle of Jewish
immigration, or what was referred to as the “ingathering of exiles.” The fact that
many new arrivals at this time came without capital or property adds to the
organizations and the American and German governments as well as the Israeli state.
”Absorption” is a key Zionist concept to the extent of the existence of a Ministry for
The principle of free Jewish immigration at the core of Zionist ideology was
institutionalized by the 1950 Law of Return. The law states that “every Jew has the
right to come to this country as an oleh (immigrant; literally ‘one who goes up’) (Law
of Return, 5710-1950)” and that all Jews have an automatic right to citizenship of the
State of Israel. Jews are classified according to the orthodox rabbinical definition,
which states that those born to a Jewish mother or who have converted to orthodox
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Judaism are Jewish. Therefore, Israeli citizenship is founded on the principle of Jus
includes Jews, children and grandchildren of Jews and their nuclear families, even if
The Law of Return continues to be a source of contention to the present day. It has
come under attack mainly from those arguing for a Palestinian right of return which
would recognize the dispossession of the Palestinian people following 1948 and
accord the same right to Palestinians as that currently held only by Jews to return to
their land. It has also been critiqued in recent times by those arguing for a
of the Law of Return under this vision would recognize the fact that “worldwide
Jewry is no longer subject to the anti-Semitic attacks that plagued them during the
first of these stretched from 1952 to 1966. During this time, immigration declined, the
annual growth rate of the Jewish population going from 23.7 percent (1948-1951) to
3.5 percent (1952-1966). A sizeable number – 155,000 – out migrated (Neuman and
Ziderman, 2001). The largest numbers entering Israel during this period originated in
changes brought about by the arrival of North African Jews, mainly Moroccans,
which in Cohen’s terms, “accentuated the ethnic transformation of the Jewish state,
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and helped maintain the Jewish majority in the face of the higher fertility rate of the
The North African and Arab immigration proved to be the most problematic in
Israel’s history thus far, sharply highlighting the extent to which the State’s public
(Kimmerling 2001). The mainly Moroccan-born arrivals added to the presence of the
entire Jewish populations of Yemen, Bulgaria, and Iraq which had been brought to
Israel during the previous period of mass immigration (Cohen 2002). During the
1950s and 1960s, the rising numbers of Mizrahim, a younger population with a higher
early 1970s. However, Mizrahi Jews and, in particular the North Africans, were
stigmatized in Israeli society. Upon their arrival they were housed in transit camps
from which they were subsequently sent to so-called “development towns” often far
from the urban centers on confiscated Palestinian lands. Here they generally worked
in unskilled labor for low pay and at constant risk of unemployment (Kapeliouk
1997). Culturally, they were seen as inferior by the Ashkenazi elite and attempts were
made to strip them of their Arabic heritage and impose upon them a European vision
Mizrahim in the frontier regions and their subordination in ethnic and class terms
challenging the success of integration claimed by Israeli leaders and their supporters
in the Diaspora.
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It was in relation to Mizrahim that the sentiment was publicly expressed in Israel for
the second time that immigration may not always constitute a good in itself.
dust” and as “unfit human material” for immigration (Grodzinsky 1998). Massad
(1996, 58) quotes foreign minister Moshe Sharet who said in 1948, “there are
countries – and I was referring to North Africa – from which not all the Jews need to
subjugation in Israeli society by Mizrahim began with the uprisings in Wadi Salib, a
formerly Arab district of Haifa which had become an overpopulated slum inhabited
mainly by Moroccans, over unequal housing conditions. By the end of the 1960s,
Mizrahi discontent was solidified in the Black Panther organization of so-called Black
Jews against Ashkenazi domination and the idea, expressed for example by Israel’s
first prime minister David Ben Gurion, that non-European Jews were devoid of
made Israel much less a haven for Jews fleeing persecution and more “an attractive
(Cohen, 2002: 41).” Furthermore, following Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, some
200,000 Jews from North America, South Africa, Australia, Latin America and
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the annexation of the Golan Heights
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wing, religious beliefs. It was only in later years, with the expansion of the settlement
motivated groups, encouraged mainly by cheap housing and other subsidies. This new
property and family in their countries of origin and preferring to come to Israel on
tourist visas or as temporary residents with a view to returning should their aliya fail.
As a result, of those arriving in the period between June 1969 and October 1970, 50
immigration in the Israeli context as most of those who left did so due to
The ideological commitment to immigration was once again fulfilled by the arrival of
identity and Zionist principles following the events of 1967, submitted an appeal to
the UN Committee on Human Rights in November 1969 which resulted in the Soviet
Union permitting 150,000 Jews to leave for Israel. The Soviet Jews arriving in the
early 1970s were met with great enthusiasm, not least by the then Prime Minister
Golda Meir who proclaimed, “You are the real Jews. We have been waiting for you
for twenty-five years (cited in Massad 1996, 61).” The post-1967 Ashkenazi
immigration instigated a trend, lasting until the present day, which saw the decline in
the numbers of first and second generation Mizrahis and a stabilization of their
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definitions always being based on the country of birth. The choice of these terms of
definition and the decision to trace it back only one generation must be seen within
the context of the Israeli nation-building project and the construction of the figure of
the Israeli. It “results in the elimination of ancestry and ethnicity from official
statistics within two generations, or about fifty years (Cohen 2002: 42).”
The dominance of Europeans in Jewish immigration to Israel in the period from 1967
to the 1990s was significantly interrupted only by the arrival of the Jews of Ethiopia
in two airlift operations, the first in 1984, the second in 1991. Numbering
development towns upon their arrival. Several thousand now live in settlement towns
difficult process, the community facing racism and discrimination, including crippling
rates of unemployment.
The most well-known and numerically significant of the recent immigration waves to
Israel is that of the Jews of the former Soviet Union. Between 1990 and 1998, the
Israeli population of 4.56 million was added to by 879,486 immigrants many of them
from the ex-USSR, a growth rate of 19.3% (Neuman and Ziderman 2001). The
majority of these arrived during the first two years, making a significant impact on
Israeli society and economy. The Israeli approach towards this new immigration
differed significantly from that adopted in the past. The State implemented a policy of
“direct absorption” under which state intervention through housing, education and
employment was no longer imposed (Razin and Scheinberg 2001). Due to the demand
it created for example in the construction industry, this mass immigration triggered
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growth, pulling the country out of recession. While unemployment decreased by
1996, immigrants were not always employed according to their qualifications for
which demand was not high. Soviet immigrants were generally highly educated, many
contributed significantly to its growth during the 1990s (Kapeliuok 1997; Razin and
Scheinberg 2001).
The Soviet olim (immigrants) of the 1990s, unlike their predecessors who chose to
immigrate from the USSR in the 1970s, were not for the most part motivated by
significant proportion are not Jewish but were admitted under the Law of Return
because they had Jewish relatives. This has led to a significant backlash against them,
in particular by the religious right-wing, elements of which even call for their
Israeli identity, and have retained their own customs and, most importantly, the
Russian language, unofficially becoming the country’s third language after Hebrew
and Arabic. The immigrants of the former Soviet Union are also very well organized
politically. The most important of the political parties that represent them is the right-
wing Yisrael b’Aliyah (Israel in immigration), headed by the former dissident Nathan
organizations such as the Russian Panthers, echoing the 1970s Israeli Black Panther
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The Soviet immigration was accompanied by a further development in the history of
Israeli immigration: the arrival of foreign migrant workers from the early 1990s to the
present day (Rosenhek 2002). Migrants from Thailand, the Philippines, Romania,
China and Bulgaria among others started to arrive in Israel following Israel’s decision
to seal the border with the Occupied Territories in 1993. This led to the traditional
Palestinian blue-collar workers no longer being able to freely access their workplaces
in Israel. While it was hoped for a time that Soviet immigrants would fill the place of
Palestinian workers, it soon became apparent that the mostly over-qualified Russians
had no intention of doing so-called “Arab work (Bartram 1998).” At present there are
workforce (Ellman and Laacher 2003). Of these at least two-thirds are illegally
residing in Israel, having entered the country as tourists (Africans and Latin
become the property of their employers who generally confiscate their passports,
making them illegal as soon as they leave their place of employment (Israeli law
requires foreign nationals to carry their passports at all times). As soon as the contract
comes to an end whether at the end of the two year period or before it, due to
extenuating circumstances, the worker must officially return to his/her country or risk
becoming illegal. This risk is taken by the great majority. The presence of
undocumented workers in the Israeli economy has led to the instigation of a campaign
to deport them from the country. However, despite political commitments to end
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migration, the continuing labor shortages brought about by the ongoing Israeli-
Palestinian conflict ensures that the Israeli employers’ lobby succeeds in by-passing
restrictions. Deported migrants are replaced by new recruits from the sending
countries and the parallel black economy and sex trade, fuelled by the ready source of
demonstrate a political presence (Kemp et al 2000), is testimony to the fact that Israel
albeit having no rights of citizenship, account for 8% of the population and will
continue to be a reality of the social formation of Israel in the future. There is also a
growing, if still small, number of asylum seekers in the country, particularly Africans,
despite the fact that Israel does not recognize political refugees. These combined
situations, in addition to the transformation of the nature of aliya brought about by the
Soviet immigration of the 1990s, backs Shuval’s (1998: 18) assertion that “the
appropriate.“ While Israel officially only accepts Jewish immigrants, the reality posed
presence within the “Green Line” (borders of Israel proper), may no longer support
Alana Lentin
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References and Further Reading
Altschul, Mark J. 2002. “Israel’s Law of Return and the Debate of Altering,
exodus from Arab lands. Edited by Malka H. Shulewitz. London and New
York: Continuum.
Grodzinsky, Yosef. 1998. Khomer Enoshi Tov (Good Human Material). Or Yehuda:
Diplomatique http://mondediplo.com/1997/11/israel.
Kemp, Adriana, Raijman, Rebeca, Resnik, Julia and Schammah Gesser, Silvina. 2000.
migrant workers in Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 1: 94-119.
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Kimmerling, Baruch. 2001. The invention and decline of Israeliness: State, society,
and the military. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Massad, Joseph. 1996. “Zionism’s Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews.”
Morris, Benny. 1987. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
Neuman, Shoshana and Ziderman, Adrian. 2001. Can Vocational Education Improve
the Wages of Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups? The case of Israel, IZA
Razin, Eran and Scheinberg, Dan. 2001. “Immigrant Entrepreneurs From the Former
USSR in Israel: Not the traditional enclave economy.” Journal of Ethnic and
Rosenhek, Zeev. 2002. “Migration Regimes and Social Rights: Migrant workers in
Zertal, Idith. 1998. From catastrophe to power: Holocaust survivors and the
Press.
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