Israel - People
Gentle these people are not, brusque are Israelis. The culture and society in Israel reflect a very wide cultural diversity, and under its influence they are and continue to shape and change all the time. Israeli society is divided into many groups and subgroups - secular, ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalists; Jews and Arabs; veterans and newcomers; immigrants from different countries; Foreign workers; and many other groups. This is how a delicate texture of a multicultural society is created, rich in traditions, sources of inspiration and cultural and social history, but also faced with divisions, dilemmas and frictions arising from the differences between the groups.
About 10% of Israel's population had dual citizenship, though the Israeli government doesn't provide official data. This leads some to question whether some Israelis view their residence in Israel as temporary and maintain a strong connection to their countries of origin. Bad things have always happened in Jewish history it's difficult to be confident they won't again. Israel has allowed dual citizenship since its original citizenship law was passed in 1952, and the Knesset has never tried to restrict it. More than 200,000 people in Israel have dual citizenship with the United States. This can cause difficulties for dual citizens, such as requiring separate appointments for newborns to travel to the United States. A 2018 paper in the International Migration Review by Princeton University researcher Yossi Harpaz found that approximately 344,000 Israelis held dual citizenship with an EU country.
Israelis who have at least one ancestor from a European country, such as Poland, Romania, or Germany, often qualify for citizenship by descent, meaning they can acquire passports from countries that they, their parents, and even their grandparents never resided in. Israelis who acquire these passports often do so after becoming adults.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first quarter of 2024, one million and fifty thousand people left Israel and one million and thirty thousand people entered Israel. That’s a difference of 20,000. It is normal for some fraction of immigrants to any country eventually to return to their country of origin, for any number of various reasons: e.g., they don’t like the new country as well as they expected, or their goal was — or came to be — to earn enough to retire back home. Israel, especially in Tel Aviv, is a very expensive country to live in, decent and affordable housing is very difficult to find, and many jobs don’t pay enough to meet the high cost of living there. Israel is a free country - - you are free to complain, free to protest and… free to leave. A conventional estimate is that , at any one time about 1 million are living in the U.S.
Estimates of the number of Israelis living in the United States vary wildly, and range between 55,000 and 1,000,000 of approximatey 7,200,000 Jewish citizens of Israel. The 2020 US census estimated 191,000 Israeli Americans. The Israeli consulate in New York estimated 180,000 to 200,000 Israelis in its area of jurisdiction. Soem scholarly estimates range between 55,000 and 137,000 Israeli-born Jews. Other sources report over 500,000 Israeli expats, with the largest enclaves in New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey Israelis began migrating to the United States shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The largest waves of immigration occurred in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Since 2010, Israeli migration to the US has continued at around four thousand per year.
Against the background of the large waves of immigration and out of a desire to create social resilience, in the first two decades of the State of Israel, the government adopted a "melting pot" policy, which strove for cultural unification and the creation of a common Israeli identity. Later, this policy was criticized on the grounds that it was formulated mainly under the inspiration of the European culture from which the first Aliya people came, but did not give expression to the heritage and culture of immigrants from many other countries, especially from Islamic countries.
Israel in 1948 was a country of 650,000 Jews; just three years after the annihilation of six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. A country on the eve of invasion by five neighboring Arab nations intent on wiping it out, or, in the words of one of the Arab leaders, "driving the Jews into the sea." A country in the throes of absorbing the remnants of decimated European Jewry - despoiled of all their worldly goods and brutally severed from their cultural and linguistic roots, but intent on surviving and creating a new life in the one piece of land that was prepared to accept them.
Each of the decades that followed was marked by yet more social and political convulsions. The fifties were the years of the mass immigration of Jews from Arab lands: from Morocco, from the Yemen, from Iraq, along with a leavening of tens of thousands of Jews from some 75 other countries; all of them brought with them their own language, national heritage and cultural baggage. The sixties were, above all, marked by the Six-Day War of 1967, when a whole new national mythos and sense of euphoria engulfed not only the Jewish population of Israel, but indeed the entire Jewish Diaspora - only to be shattered to a large extent by the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and its aftermath, the effects of which are still very much with us 24 years later. The seventies and the eighties saw the first tentative bridges to peace with the Arab world, beginning with the epoch-making visit to Israel of President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt in 1977.
The first task facing the young state, once its physical security had been assured, was to confront the existing educational system and build a structure that would make one Israeli people out of the multi-stranded population that made up this new state. Many mistakes were made in the process. It took a great deal of time and often bitter experience to realize that the aim was not a "melting pot," to use the concept that was then current, but rather a blend in which every individual could proudly maintain his or her cultural heritage within a receptive society that ensured room for everyone, while still forging a homogenous cultural identity - a "bouillabaisse" of individual flavors that combine to make a harmonious whole. That aim has still not been wholly achieved, but it is recognized as the target. A reform of the educational system was closely linked to the necessity to teach Hebrew to the new immigrants, most of whom had no prior knowledge of the language.
In recent decades, the ideological and practical recognition of the importance of a policy of cultural openness, which involves all groups of society, has been increasing. The diverse branches of culture in Israeli society have grown and operated since the days of the Hebrew settlement. Over the years, they have been shaped by the influence of a variety of factors, including the history of the Jewish people and the country's population, the changing demographic makeup of society, the sectarian origin of the Israelis and their religious and national affiliation as well as the geographic environment, the neighboring countries and global trends in the various fields.
Israel's cultural founding fathers and mothers perceived a national imperative in creating one society where ethnic individuality and varied cultural backgrounds would be subsumed within a homogenous "Israeli" society. That perception is very much a thing of the past. Israel is a multi-cultural society, and it is now accepted that the country stands only to benefit from retaining cultural individuality while striving to achieve a parallel Israeli culture which will absorb and be enriched by the manifold strands that make up the whole. Israel is still a country of immigrants - from 1989 to 1996 alone, well over 600,000 immigrants arrived from the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Gone are the old concerns of nation building, absorption of new immigrants, the heroic cast of the pioneers of the kibbutzim, the melting pot, existentialist concerns for the future of the country. In its place is a new brand of less spiritual concerns - the good life, the pursuit of happiness, the debunking of hitherto "sacred" causes.
On 19 July 2018 Israel passed a law that, for the first time, declared the country to be “the nation-state of the Jewish people”, excluding the Arab-Israeli minority that makes up twenty percent of the population. The legislation also downgrades the status of the Arabic language and encourages the development of Jewish settlement. The Knesset approved the Nationality Law in its second and third readings, with 62 MKs voting in favor of the legislation, 55 voted against and two abstained.
Israel is now officially an exclusive ethno-religious state. Israel is not the state of its citizens, but the state of the Jewish people. Thus Palestinians in Israel have Israeli passports but they do not have rights equal to those of Jewish citizens. While South Africa’s apartheid used race to determine citizenship, the state of Israel uses religious identification to determine citizenship.
An Ethnostate is a country populated by, or dominated by the interests of a single racial, religious, or ethnic group. America is a state for Americans, China is a state for the Chinese, Brazil is a state for Brazilians. These are a national identities and not an ethnic identity or a religious identity. Israel is an ethno-state because racial and ethnic origins and practices are fundamental to the nation and state. But in Israel there is absolutely no suggestion of a national identity that is Jewish that extends to non-ethnically Jewish people.
Many countries have an ethnic character in which the majority shares ethnicity, language, and culture (often with minorities present as well). National identity is connected to this ethnic identity in some way. French is both a national identity and an ethnic one. Same with Danish. Same with Dutch. Same with Japanese. Same with Korean. Same with Croatian. Same with Vietnamese. Same with Slovenian. Same with Armenian. All 22 Arab countries have an "Arab" ethnic character to their national identity too ("The Arab Republic of Egypt", the "United Arab Emirates", for example). Some countries, like Japan, have stayed fairly ethnically homogenous by restricting immigration.
Much of the bill, sponsored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, dealt with obvious signs that Israel is a Jewish state, such as affirming the symbols on the flag and shield, setting the Hebrew calendar as the country’s official calendar, recognizing Jewish holidays and days of remembrance, the national anthem and naming Jerusalem as the capital.
"This is a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset after the vote. Netanyahu defended the law. "We will keep ensuring civil rights in Israel's democracy but the majority also has rights and the majority decides," he said. "An absolute majority wants to ensure our state's Jewish character for generations to come."
The Nationality Law aims to codify Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people into Israel’s Basic Laws. Largely symbolic, the law was enacted just after the 70th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel. It stipulates that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it". The bill also strips Arabic of its designation as an official language alongside Hebrew, downgrading it to a "special status" that enables its continued use within Israeli institutions. The law declares that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and sets the Hebrew calendar as the official calendar of the state.
Clauses that were dropped in last-minute political wrangling - and after objections by Israel's president and attorney-general - would have enshrined in law the establishment of Jewish-only communities, and instructed courts to rule according to Jewish ritual law when there were no relevant legal precedents.
Instead, a more vaguely-worded version was approved, which says: "The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment." Even after the changes, critics said the new law will deepen a sense of alienation within the Arab minority.
Hassan Jabareen, the director general of Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel, said that the law had key elements of apartheid, which is prohibited under international law. He said: "The new law constitutionally enshrines the identity of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people only – despite the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of the state and residents of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – and guarantees the exclusive ethnic-religious character of Israel as Jewish... By defining sovereignty and democratic self-rule as belonging solely to the Jewish people Israel has made discrimination a constitutional value and has professed its commitment to favoring Jewish supremacy as the bedrock of its institutions”.
An Israeli citizen is different from a permanent resident of Israel and a temporary resident of Israel, as well as anyone residing in Israel on different Israeli visa categories. One distinct way this differs is demonstrated by the fact that only Israeli citizens have Israeli passports. The issue of Israeli citizenship is determined by the 1952 Citizenship Law, also known as the Israeli Nationality Law. This law, which was legislated by the Israeli parliament (Knesset) four years after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, has been amended several times since, but in essence has remained the same and outlines the ways to acquire Israeli citizenship.
The population of the State of Israel stood at 8,904,373, according to census figures released 21 September 2014 by the Population and Immigration Authority. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel’s population has surpassed 8 million in 2013, including a population of over 6 million Jews, a historically freighted figure equaling the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The number of Jews living in Israel actually topped the 6 million mark in early 2013, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, a milestone marked by Netanyahu at the time. “Six million Jews perished in the … Holocaust.” Netanyahu said at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in April 2013. “Today, for the first time since the establishment of the State, more than 6 million Jews live in the State of Israel. You, the citizens of Israel, are the testament to our victory. From the abyss of the Holocaust, we climbed to the peak of Zion. From a deep pit, we rose to a pinnacle.“
Of the approximately 6.4 million Israelis in 2001, about 5.2 million were counted as Jewish, though some of those are not considered Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law. Since 1989, nearly a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union have arrived in Israel, making this the largest wave of immigration since independence. In addition, almost 50,000 members of the Ethiopian Jewish community have immigrated to Israel, 14,000 of them during the dramatic May 1991 Operation Solomon airlift. Thirty-six percent of Israelis were born outside Israel.
The three broad Jewish groupings are the Ashkenazim, or Jews who trace their ancestry to western, central, and eastern Europe; the Sephardim, who trace their origin to Spain, Portugal, southern Europe, and North Africa; and Mizrahi [Eastern or Oriental Jews], who descend from ancient communities in Islamic lands. The exact population breakdown is hard to calculate because intermarriage is now quite common. But by 2015 Mizrahi or part-Mizrahi Jews made up roughly half of Israel's Jewish population. Of the non-Jewish population, about 73% are Muslims, about 10.5% are Christian, and under 10% are Druze.
The Mizrahi dispute goes back to Israel's earliest days of independence. Arriving from Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa after Israel's establishment in 1948, many Mizrahi immigrants were sent to shantytown transit camps and largely sidelined by the European leaders of the founding Labor Party. The educational experience of Israeli Jews from Islamic countries (Mizrahi Jews) demonstrated the struggle between egalitarian rhetoric (a critical multiculturalism with a social-democratic character) on one hand and a practice of segregation (an autonomist multiculturalism with fundamentalist features) on the other.
The settlement of the frontiers in the Israeli 'ethnocracy ' exacerbated the marginalised incorporation of Mizrahi (Eastern Jews), as many of them were settled in peripheral, low status and segregated localities. These structural conditions help explain the persisting disparities between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews. The case of Israel thus exposes a paradox: the very frontier settlement promoted as essential for nation-building, may cause intra-national fragmentation and conflict.
Likud's Menachem Begin, though he was himself of Polish Jewish descent, cultivated an outsiders' alliance that appealed to the Mizrahis' sense of deprivation. He swept into power with massive Mizrahi backing in 1977, breaking nearly 30 years of Labor rule.
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