Just Go the Jail, Benny

As you are no doubt aware, Binyamin Netanyahu sort-of won the last Israeli parliamentary elections, and Itamar Ben Gvir, right wing nut and bigot, whose party achieved unexpected success in the vote, is now a crucial member of any coalition.

And, he's gone there, demanding that Israel revoke recognition for non-Orthodox conversions, which would also mean revoking the right of return to non-Orthodox converts.  (He has been calling for expulsion or Arab Israeli citizens for years)

On any number of levels, moral, political, and diplomatic, this is a disastrous policy, but this is what proportional representation, or at least proportional representation with insufficiently low bars to entry into parliament, as the Knesset, does.

Rather ironically, a surfeit of democracy produces undemocratic results:

Far-right leader Itamar Ben Gvir on Sunday demanded that the presumed incoming coalition pass a law to end recognition of Reform conversions for the purposes of citizenship.

This latest demand in the ongoing coalition negotiations was quickly denounced by the Reform and Conservative religious rights groups, particularly the Reform movement’s legal arm, the Israel Religious Action Center. The outgoing diaspora affairs minister called the proposal an unnecessary provocation as only an exceedingly small number of Reform converts request Israeli citizenship while the symbolism of the move would ostracize non-Orthodox Jews from Israel.

For years, Israel has accepted conversions performed by the Reform movement abroad as sufficient for Israeli citizenship, and last year the High Court of Justice ruled that such conversions performed in Israel would be recognized as well — for people who had already been living in Israel without citizenship.

This was possible because Israel’s Law of Return, which largely determines the country’s immigration policies, had left the issue of conversions deliberately vague, not specifying if they had to be performed by an Orthodox rabbi. As a result of this ambiguity, the court ruled that any conversion performed by an established community would suffice, including non-Orthodox ones, much to the consternation of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and religious political parties.

………

This latest demand to give recognition only to Orthodox conversions comes days after Ben Gvir’s political partner, Bezalel Smotrich, issued his own contentious demand to remove the so-called “grandchild clause” of Israel’s Law of Return, which guarantees citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, provided they don’t practice another religion.

“This demand, if granted, means a clear and sharp rift between us and the majority of the Jewish community in the United State of America. This is the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel, they have a great influence and are vital for Israel and for our ties with the US,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai said in an interview with the Kan broadcaster on Sunday morning.

I would note that if these folks get what they want, they will no longer be able to depend on non-Orthodox Jewish taxpayers to provide subsidies for the schnorers who spend their days in Yeshiva and refuse to work for a living.  Additionally, the Orthodox will have to serve, and be subject to conscription, to replace the non-Orthodox people who are now serving in the IDF.