This is not a story from Apartheid South Africa. And not from Nazi Germany. This is a story from Israel in the year 2021.
A little girl, Daniel, only seven years old, is experiencing the full force of Israeli racism, and the main reason for her suffering is because her father died.
Shmuel Lev spent his vacation in Thailand a number of years back and he met a Thai woman and they fell in love. They decided to marry and live together in Israel. Kultida, the Thai woman, obtained a visa to enter Israel and they settled here, with Daniel being born in 2014. But a short time later, disaster struck. Shmuel, only 52 years old, had a heart attack and died. Daniel was left without a father, being only three years old. And while she and her mother were trying to overcome their sorrow and move on with their lives, the interior ministry interfered. When Kultida visisted the Ministry to renew her residency visa, she was refused and in addition notified that her naturalization process had been halted and she would need to leave the country. The explanation? Kultida was allowed in the naturalization process because she was married to an Israeli, not because she is the widow of an Israeli.
The Ministry then issued an expulsion order which Ms. Lev defied, so now she is considered “illegal” in this country, which robs her of social security services and payments, health insurance and widow’s pension. And since Daniel is only 7, it is acceptable for the Interior Ministry to send her with her mother back to Thailand, even though she is an Israeli citizen and all she knows is Israel.
The Interior Ministry and even the judges that heard the various appeals of Kultida came up with all kind of reasons and excuses why Ms. Lev should not be allowed to stay in the country but they could not disguise the real motivation behind the efforts to remove Kultida and her daughter from Israel. She is not Jewish. And her daughter may be Israeli because of some fluke in the law but she also doesn’t count as far as the Jewish purists are concerned. And with Shmuel gone, there is no reason in the world why the Jewish State should allow this blemish on its purity to stay
It is hard to believe that even in such heart-breaking cases as this one of Kultida and Daniel, their is worry that Goyish blood will contaminate the Jewish purity but this story is only one of many, and religious circles and their puppets in politics and in particular in the Interior Ministry will leave no stone unturned to prevent non-Jewish people to settle in this country, and the few laws under which this is made possible are under constant scrutiny.
Daniel and Kultida Lev still have a difficult time ahead of them. The fact that there are still people in Israel who believe that humanity goes way before Jewishness gives reason for optimism that in the end the Jewish racists will relent and give up on this one. It doesn’t change the facts that again and again, the laws that were put in place to allow Jews an easy and welcome transition to a life in Israel, are used to prevent others, who for whatever reason came to a point in their life that settling in Israel becomes an option, from doing so. The Law of Return is a justified and reasonable one as long as it is used in the way it was meant and not to exert racist powers over innocent people who found themselves for one reason or another, connected to the Jewish State. Because it is making Israel a Racist State. A State where the only thing that really matters is your Jewishness. It is high time to return Jewishness to the realm of humanism and start to put people first. All people, not only those with a Jewish mother.
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