Even as Israel makes sure to keep lots of other folks out of Israel, from Palestinian refugees who used to live there to African refugees who came to work, a new group of Peruvians who have converted to Judaism is being welcomed by the country, reports Haaretz:
Mixed-race Peruvian converts to Judaism, also known as “Jews from the Amazons,” made aliyah to Israel last month, as part of a renewed immigration in which a total of 150 are expected to arrive by 2014.
The group of 18 from the small Jewish community in Iquitos, on the banks of the Amazon in Peru, arrived in Israel on a KLM flight and settled in Ramle last month.
The Jewish Agency will be assisting the aliyah process for all 150 new immigrants, who converted to Judaism with the Conservative Movement and whose immigration has been approved by the Interior Ministry.
Four years ago Adam Horowitz posted, “The situation in a nutshell“:
Anna Baltzer, author, and Haithem El-Zabri, founder of the Palestine Online Store. Austin, TX, November 2008. [Photographer unknown]
Thanks to Max Blumenthal.
Half-truths are worse than lies:
These people , quite few of them, are the descendants of the Moroccan Jews who came to Peru in 19th century. Yes they are intermarried and mixed with time between among the locals population. But they are Jewish by their roots and religion, and after a long battle in courts, were allowed to make aliyah to Israel. Same as one of your descendants. Mr. Weiss, would be allowed.
And no doubt Israel will highlight the 150 mixed-race Peruvians to demonstrate that it has an inclusive non-racist multicultural society.
Israeli policy is not racist, as it favors Jews regardless of their race. Similarly for Nazi policy: it sought to persecute and murder all Jews, regardless of race (according to Hilberg, the official definition of “Jew” included anyone who ever practiced or believed in the Jewish religion).
Both policies discriminate—although in opposite “directions”—on the same basis, namely that of a person’s “Jewishness.” Moreover, both define “Jewishness” in the same way: conversion “in” is possible, but not conversion “out,” although it is overwhelmingly a matter of a person’s ancestry. Hence, one policy is racist if and only if the other policy is racist.
It seems to me they are trying to make it ever more difficult to force the settlers to leave whatever decision the world finally adopts. Furthermore, everything they do is tying their fate closer to US hegemony. The US is becoming increasingly unpopular among populations; neither Morsi supporters nor his opponents actually want that US 1.3 billion. Putin is toying with Obama over Snowden which may seem a dangerous game but Putin has less to lose. The war on terror is increasingly viewed as part of the Emperor’s fantasy wardrobe particularly when compared with the dirty linen Assange and Snowden have exposed, with more one imagines to come if not from them from elsewhere. At a not dissimilar point in Roman times, legions were withdrawn from Britain and Northern Gaul, might the US decide to leave the ME, inc. Israel, to its own devices, particularly as it grows less dependent on Gulf oil while Israel’s interference in US political life and errant local behavior become ever more of a liability?
>> It seems to me they are trying to make it ever more difficult to force the settlers to leave whatever decision the world finally adopts.
Surely all that’s needed is just a *little* more “dialog” [sic] and “normalization” to trigger the settlers’ “Jewish values”, which will cause them to see the errors of their ways and:
– immediately remove themselves from occupied lands;
– return to within Israel’s / Partition borders; and
– work to transform the supremacist state into a secular, democratic and egalitarian state of and for all its citizens, equally.
;-)