The Truth Behind the Foreign Workers Debate

By Moshe Feiglin

Ben Dror Yemini is one of the few voices in Israel's mainstream press that dares side with the government's decision to return a small portion of children of foreign workers to their home countries. In a courageous article that he published Tuesday morning, (Hebrew) Yemini delineates the problem and bemoans the fact that the absolute majority of public opinion shapers in Israel have adopted the populist position, while leaving the weak sector of society to pay the price. Yemini accuses the media, who with no exception show the sweet, foreign-looking children begging in perfect Hebrew to remain in Israel - of being strong against the weak. "Let's see them making room in their luxury apartments for five illegal worker families, and then we can talk," Yemini wrote.

Yemini is right, but the source of the problem lies much deeper.

The assumption is that the foreign workers problem is a technical problem. According to this approach, they have their reasons for entering Israel, there are quite a few businesses and institutions in Israel that are happy to employ them - and the government must find the proper balance between the different interests and human and social problems that are created as a result.

But if we look to see who dominates the campaign against the banishment of the foreign children, we quickly discover that they are not the representatives of senior-citizens homes or farmers desperate for more working hands. In other words, the motivation of the leaders of the struggle against the government is not economic. It is ideological. Interestingly, it is the very same elements that encourage the expulsion of Jewish children from their homes. And no amount of Jewish children's tears will change their views.

At its root, this is not a case of spoiled populism of public-opinion shapers on the backs of Israel's poor. This is the tip of the ideological iceberg of something much larger than the question of illegal immigration.

It is no surprise that many of the NGOs lobbying in the Knesset against returning the foreigners to their countries are funded by the New Israel Fund. They want a new Israel: an Israel bereft of national identity, a state of all its citizens, a state that is not Jewish.

We must see the foreign workers issue as part of a multi-pronged attack on the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. One part of the offensive is fostering the immigration of complete Christians from the former USSR to Israel. These people do not identify as Jews, are not at all interested in converting to Judaism, establish churches here and have even begun to demand cultural autonomy. Any cultural or ethnic element that will dilute Israeli/Jewish identity with other cultures will receive the support of those elements and groups that are now bitterly protesting the banishment of the foreign workers' children.

Nobody likes to see crying children being led against their will to the airplanes home. But it is very important to understand that this has nothing to do with humanitarianism. It is the cynical exploitation of our shared concern for our fellow human beings in the service of an ideological agenda.

Israel's humanitarian approach should be expressed by the manner in which we return the foreigners. We cannot ignore the fact that although these workers are illegal, Israel's policies until now have contradicted themselves. As such, we can offer reimbursement for those foreign workers who were illegally in Israel prior to the cabinet decision. We can take these steps in a moral and respectful way; we must not humiliate anybody. We can give them a reasonable amount of time to attend to their arrangements and we can help them as much as possible. That is how a Jewish state should respond to this crisis.

Ultimately, though, Israel's government must remember Ben Gurion's words at the establishment of the State: "We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel." A Jewish state - not a state of all its citizens.