Gershom Gorenberg says a proposed amendment to Israel’s citizenship law shows how far right Netanyahu’s government really is.
Let me parse that. First, the amendment doesn’t apply to people coming to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews or people with Jewish fathers or grandfathers. (The definition of being Jewish, in the law as in traditional Judaism, is having a Jewish mother.) That is, only people with no ethnic connection to being Jewish will have to affirm loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish state.”
