Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked has directed her office to ease citizenship requirements for the families of Ukrainian immigrants to Israel, but only if they are Jewish according to Israel’s religious standards, according to the head of Israel’s Administration of Border Crossings, Population, and Immigration, who testified before the Knesset on Monday.
Lawmakers who know about the policy, which determines based solely on religion and not eligibility for citizenship, harshly criticized it as discriminatory and without precedent.
This decision was taken during g a special session on Israel’s efforts to help Ukrainian Jewry, took place in the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and not — as it normally would be — in the Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee as that parliamentary group has yet to be formed due to conflicts between the coalition and the opposition.
“In light of the current situation, Immigration and Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata called the lack of a functioning immigration committee a “failure and even negligence.”
When Russia launched their offensive on Thursday, more than 10,000 Ukrainians came in touch with the Jewish Agency, which encourages immigration to Israel — commonly known by the Hebrew term Aliyah.
The immediate families of those eligible to immigrate to Israel — anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent — can also receive Israeli citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, provided they immigrate together. Families normally travel together; however, due to Ukraine’s drafting of adult men, many of them are being forced to stay behind while their families travel to Israel without them.
Under normal circumstances, if a man is the only family member eligible for immigration — for example, if he is the grandson of a Jew but not Jewish himself, because Judaism is passed down through the maternal line — the rest of his family cannot obtain citizenship without him.
But in a hearing on the ways Israel is helping Ukraine Jews in light of the Russian attack, the head of the Administration of Border Crossings, Population and Immigration, Yoel Lipovsky, told lawmakers that Shaked had ordered the ministry to suspend the requirement that the family must arrive together temporarily — but only if the person eligible for citizenship was Jewish according to Orthodox law.
If the eligible person is Jewish but does not plan to immigrate to Israel, his family cannot get immigrant status. Due to Ukraine’s conscription condition for men, the interior minister has now approved granting immigrant status to his family, even if he remains there. “If the eligible member of a family is not Jewish, the family cannot immigrate without him,” Lipovsky told the committee.
The leading director of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, ‘MK Gilad Kariv’ stated that she was shocked by the policy of Shaked, and she thought that the policy must be reviewed again.