Posted on 06/27/2003 11:59:22 AM PDT by yonif
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came out in support of the status quo and against Shinui Minister Avraham Poraz when he concluded Thursday that the Interior Ministry must recognize conversions performed by the Israeli Rabbinical Court as a basis for citizenship.
"Israel is a Jewish state and we have to preserve its Jewish identity. Citizenship should be granted automatically to conversions authorized in Israel by the rabbinical court. It will be a harsh blow if a Jew cannot get citizenship when he converts in Israel," Sharon said. He added that failure to give converts the same right to automatic citizenship as other Jews could have negative implications both in Israel and abroad.
Sharon's statements were made during a one-time ministerial forum to debate citizenship issues that included Poraz, the National Union's Benny Elon, the National Religious Party's Zevulen Orlev, Likud's Ehud Olmert, and Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein.
The coalition agreement forbade Poraz from acting against the status quo on religious issues. But his opinions regarding who is a citizen were made public last month when Poraz wrote a position paper for the High Court of Justice, which is hearing a case on the matter.
In the paper, Poraz wrote that he does not believe conversions done in Israel should be the basis for citizenship even though the Law of Return, which offers automatic citizenship to Jews, does not distinguish between a convert and a Jew from birth.
Poraz had said he was concerned that the conversion process was being abused by foreigners, particularly those from the particularly those from the undeveloped countries, who want to be Israeli citizens but who are not truly interested in being Jewish.
"In this matter there is no difference between an Orthodox, Conservative or Reform conversion," Poraz wrote. He similarly said, among other things, that he wanted to extend citizenship to children of foreign workers who had grown up here and who, therefore, identified as Israelis. Upon receiving Poraz's position paper, Rubinstein appealed to Sharon saying Poraz's statements reflected a change in the status quo and that such a decision should not be left to the discretion of a single minister. It should instead be debated by a wider governmental body.
On Thursday, Sharon brought together a one-time forum that struck down both of Poraz's opinions regarding citizenship. It also created a small committee that includes Poraz to make decisions regarding humanitarian cases, including children of foreign workers. The committee is also debating whether to create a criteria for such humanitarian cases.
But although Sharon came out in favor of granting citizenship to those who convert in Israel, he also said that the rabbinic courts should speed up the conversion process and make it easier. He noted that if he wanted to convert based by today's standards it would be hard to do so. Sharon added that those who want to, should be able to join their destiny with that of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
Sharon also struck down Poraz's opinion that children of foreign workers be granted citizenship because he feared that such citizenship would then also have to be granted to the parents. He believes the numbers of foreign workers who would therefore be given citizenship could be has high as 60,000. Sharon also feared that it could impact decision made regarding family unification issues for Palestinians in Israel.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office said that the decisions taken were against Poraz's policies and should not be interpreted as decisions against Poraz who still retains the right to grant citizenship based on existing governmental guidelines.
Poraz told Israel Radio that the decisions clearly went against his stance. In particular, he said, he thought it was problematic to only recognize Orthodox conversion since it was important to establish parity between all the streams in Judaism.
The Israel Religious Action Center protested Sharon's statements during the meeting, explaining that keeping conversions solely in the hands of an Orthodox rabbinical court was endangering the Jewish character of the state by alienating hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Judaism. It called on Sharon to take the sole conversion power away from the Orthodox rabbinical courts.
National Religious Party leader Effi Eitam, however, was pleased with Sharon's stance. Eitam was out of the country and could not attend the meeting, even though he had also appealed to Sharon to intervene on this issue.
He released a statement Thursday that said, "I hope that the personal interference of Sharon will put an end to the pathetic attempts on the part of the Shinui minister to act as an independent authority and to act in a way that harms the Jewish tradition and the Jewish identity of the State of Israel."
This is the same thing as saying, by allowing marriage only between a man and a woman endangers the character of the American family by alienating hundreds of thousands of gays, a position that the (Reform) RAC also endorses.
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