Gov’t debates bill proposal to cancel Law of Return Grandparent Clause

The committee decided to debate the proposal once again in a month’s time.

The government’s Ministerial Legislation Committee debated in its weekly meeting on Sunday a bill proposal by ultra-conservative MK Avi Maoz (Noam) to cancel the Grandfather Clause in the Law of Return, which enables anyone with a Jewish grandparent to become a citizen of Israel.

The committee decided to debate the proposal once again in a month’s time. The Knesset will then already be in recess until October, and the bill is therefore unlikely to advance in the near future.

An estimated 500,000 Israelis immigrated to the country since 1970 under the provision, which has become a source of contention within Israel and a point of friction with Jewish communities abroad.

Maoz in March quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in protest of what he described as the government’s failure to advance a sufficiently Orthodox and nationalist agenda. The ministerial committee delayed by three weeks a second bill by Maoz to ban discussion of gender identity and LGBTQ issues in classrooms until 8th grade, and limit them for high school students.

'The law is being exploited by many who've severed ties with Jewish people, traditions'

“In its current form, the Law of Return allows even the grandson of a Jew to receive immigrant status and rights, even if he himself, and sometimes even his parents, are no longer Jewish,” Maoz wrote in the bill’s preamble. “This situation means that the law is being exploited by many who have severed all ties with the Jewish people and its traditions, and in effect empties the law of its original intention, which was to open the country’s gates to the Jews of the Diaspora.”

Similar or identical bills have been introduced in recent years by other members of Netanyahu’s government, including fellow Likud party lawmaker Shlomo Karhi, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and influential far-right politician Simcha Rothman, according to the preamble. Israel’s haredi Orthodox parties, which are also part of Netanyahu’s coalition, historically have opposed the “grandparent clause” as well.

Supporters of the grandparent clause say it upholds Israel’s identity as a refuge for anyone with Jewish ancestry, especially those excluded by Orthodox definitions. The clause was added in 1970 partly in response to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, which marked for persecution anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.

Many also see the clause as critical for welcoming Jews from the former Soviet Union, where decades of suppression left many unable to meet religious definitions but still connected, often deeply, to their Jewish heritage.

ASAF SHALEV/JTA contributed to this article.