Israel Citizenship
Updated 2023-12-08
Myth of Citizenship By definition Israel’s commitment to being a Jewish state necessitates codifying discrimination against Palestinian citizens as non-Jews in its laws. Israeli nationality does not exist, but a Jewish nationality – separate from citizenship – does. This means that national-citizens, i.e. Jews, are afforded greater rights under the law than citizens-only, i.e. Palestinians, who face a regime of institutionalized discrimination embodied in more than 50 discriminatory laws. Thus by their very existence, Palestinian citizens of Israel threaten Israel’s Jewish majority and are considered threats to, rather than members of, the state.
Israel’s Jewish citizen majority is not organic: it was artificially created by the expulsion of the Indigenous population and is maintained by denying citizenship to about half the people living under Israel’s control, namely Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
This discrimination dates back to Israel’s founding and the Palestinian Nakba. Between 1948-1967, Israel imposed military rule on its Palestinian citizens, severely limiting their freedom of movement, livelihoods, and expression, while simultaneously passing laws to transfer Palestinian land to state ownership or control, all in all seizing 73% of all Palestinian land. https://uscpr.org/activist-resource/myth-of-citizenship/
The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel https://www.adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/upfiles/2011/Adalah_The_Inequality_Report_March_2011.pdf
2023-12-03 I Am Renouncing My Israeli Citizenship. Here’s Why. On Nov. 6, I was supposed to have an appointment at the Israeli consulate in New York to begin my application to renounce my Israeli citizenship. That morning, I finalized a letter of explanation to the Israeli population and Immigration Authority to explain my reasoning. By that time, the apartheid State of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and settlers in the West Bank had already committed countless atrocities in the prior several weeks alone, bombing hospitals, schools, and churches, killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians, and displacing thousands more. The genocide we have seen unfolding since Oct. 7 is just one horrifying chapter of the decades of sheer brutality and inhumanity of the Zionist project to colonize Palestine. This is a clear continuation of the Nakba, the theft of Palestinian land, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people since and before 1948.
Since I had always planned on going public about my renunciation and had been working on my letter of explanation, I decided to post it on social media, where it spread widely. Unfortunately for Israel, its most recent genocidal campaign meant the letter received greater visibility. On Nov. 20, I went to the rescheduled appointment only to be denied the chance to submit my application since I do not have the papers to prove I did not serve in the IDF (I do not have access to those). So, this op-ed is a way to further clarify why I chose to take a very public approach to renouncing my citizenship and why I am encouraging others to do so, too. https://truthout.org/articles/renouncing-israeli-citizenship/
2014-00-00 Hobbesian Citizenship: How the Palestinians Became a Minority in Israel https://www.academia.edu/29815214/Hobbesian_Citizenship_How_the_Palestinians_Became_a_Minority_in_Israel
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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