Toby Bartels wrote:
- An accusation of racism on behalf of the Israeli government
has been Orwellianly interpreted as racism on behalf of the accuser. (In a more complicated context, that can be a wise deduction, such as when people excuse all lex solis regimes except Israel. But many people are just ignorant about that situation.)
Whoops! the Latin is backwards; should be "lex sanguinis".
In a lex solis (jus solis, law of the soil) regime, citizenship is determined by the location of birth; in a lex sanguinis (jus sanguinis, law of the blood) regime, citizenship is determined by the status of the parents. Lex sanguinis is arguably racist when the parents' race matters, irrespective of the parents' citizenship status. (It's arguably racist in any case, but that'a a harder argument.)
This is the case with quite a few regimes, the State of Israel among them. That Jews of any birth nationality (and any degree of religious practice) are permitted to become citizens of Israel upon their arrival, is a common argument for the «Zionism = racism» equation. But many people that make that argument ignore the similar situation in (for just one example) Germany (IIRC). In certain cases, such a biased attitude may be traceable to their own racism.
And of course, things are never as simple as this bipolar division. Israel, Germany, etc, also have lex solis provisions.
FWIW, the 'lex sanguinis' type provisions are in fact quite widespread, especially in the EU. In addition to Germany, Greece has such provisions -- I was born and have lived in the US my entire life, but can claim Greek citizenship simply by providing documentation of my Greek heritage; meanwhile, the many Albanian immigrants in the country are not Greek citizens. There's probably other countres in the EU that do this as well that I don't know about.
-Mark
In Ireland, anyone outside Ireland whose parents or grandparents were Irish citizens are entitled to Irish citizenship.
JT
_________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail