Loyalty Oaths in Israel

Israel is consumed with controversy over new oath of allegiance laws that have just been passed by the Knesset. Lee Smith writing at Tablet Magazine offers some insightful analysis:

“Sunday the Knesset voted to require an oath of allegiance be administered to naturalized citizens of Israel, swearing to abide by the Jewish and democratic nature of the state. The response has been blind outrage inside Israel and abroad….

The idea that mandating an oath of allegiance for new citizens is a sign of Israeli fascism is part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel. It fits so well with media blather about the decline of Israeli democracy–and the nightmarish scariness of Israel’s foreign minister–that critics have conveniently ignored the fact that such oaths are normal fare in every major Western democracy. The U.S. oath of allegiance for new citizens, for example, requires new Americans to ‘absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty’; promise to ‘support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic’; promise to ‘bear arms’ and ‘perform noncombatant’ service at the direction of the U.S. government; and swear that one takes the oath ‘freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion’ in the name of God Almighty himself, all of which makes swearing an oath of allegiance to the democratic Jewish State of Israel seem like pretty weak stuff.

The fact that Jews who become new citizens under the Law of Return are exempt from taking the oath is wrongly cited as proof of the inherent racism of the proposed new law. Countries that allow individuals not born in the country to establish citizenship on the basis of blood and cultural ties–a doctrine known as jus sanguinis, or ‘right of blood’–commonly have a different citizenship procedure for those citizens than for other immigrants. Most European countries–and many other countries–rely on jus sanguinis as the foundation for citizenship. In Bulgaria, persons of very distant Bulgarian origin can become citizens immediately upon arrival in the country without any waiting period and without giving up their current citizenship. The same is true in Croatia. China has a similar policy. And that only takes us through the Cs.”