Alana Lentin. ‘Israel’, in Matthew J. Gibney and Randall Hansen (Eds.

) Immigration and
Asylum: From 1900 to the present. Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

The State of Israel, which gained independence in 1948, can be historically

characterized as a country of immigration. The importance of Jewish immigration was

central to the ideology of the Zionist movement since its inception in 1897. Israel

therefore represents an interesting case from a global perspective on migration

because immigration of Diaspora Jews to it began before the establishment of an

independent state which could regulate immigration on the basis of its own laws.

Jewish immigration was historically a political act of ideological commitment and

continues to be mythologized in this way to the present-day despite the diversity of

actual reasons for which Jews have left their countries of origin and come to Israel

over the course of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, since the early days of the

Zionist movement, immigration of Jews to Palestine – later Israel – was conceived of

in the ideological terms of aliyah, literally meaning “going up.” The use of this value-

laden term replaces discussion of hagira (migration) in the Israeli context where, until

more recently with reference only to non-Jewish incomers, it has rarely been used

(Shuval, 1998).

Early ideological immigration by mainly European ‘pioneers’ accounted for the

presence of 83,704 Jews in British mandated Palestine by 1922 which, at the time,

was populated by almost 700,000 Palestinian Arabs according to the first official

census. A year before the creation of the Jewish state, the census taken on March 31,

1947 showed that Jews had gone from making up 11.1 percent of the population in

1922 to 31.1 percent or 649,500 of the overall 1.95 million inhabitants. According to

official Israeli historiography (Cohen 2002), this situation had been brought about by

1
five successive waves of Jewish immigration between 1882 and 1939. Until 1932

these immigrants consisted mainly of ideological Zionists originating in Eastern

Europe, in particular Russia, Romania, and Poland. These early waves of immigration

were accompanied by a settling of the land by means of the moshava (private

agricultural settlement), the kibbutz, and the moshav, forms of collective agricultural

settlement. Those who arrived following 1932 focused on building the country’s

urban centers. By the end of the British Mandate (the period during which Palestine

was entrusted to the British by the League of Nations following World War One),

Jewish settlers lived in six cities, 22 smaller urban settlements and 302 agricultural

settlements, with 80% concentrated in the three largest cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem

and Haifa (Neuman and Ziderman, 2001).

The period of 1933 to 1939 brought about a sizeable inflow from the Jewish

populations of Central Europe and Germany, fleeing Nazi persecution. Since 1933

this immigration was officially constrained under the British mandate but continued

unofficially due to Zionist activity, such as that by the underground military

organization, the Haganah (1920-1948) and the Af-al-pi (‘despite’) project,

specifically instigated in 1936 to bring German Jews to Palestine despite British

restrictions and the Jewish Agency’s (pre-state Jewish leadership) official opposition

to clandestine immigration. The latter refused to violate British Mandate regulations

regarding visas and certificates for entry into Palestine in the fear of jeopardizing

official channels. Its control over entry into Palestine was opposed by a number of

sources, including Irgun Zva’i Le’umi (National Military Organization) leader Ze’ev

Jabotinsky, who advocated illegal entry in the aim of what he called “free

immigration.”

2
A further period of immigration, leading to the outbreak of the Second World War, is

accounted for separately from the five earlier immigration waves and refers to the

immigration of Jews between 1939 and 1948. Apart from a small number of visas

issued under the 1939 British White Paper quota, this wave, known as Aliya Bet

(Immigration B), was mainly characterized by illegal immigration organized covertly

by activists in the Yishuv (settlement) in Palestine together with partisans and Zionist

youth groups in Europe and the Middle East. During the period of 1945 to 1948 the

British quotas were extremely restrictive and many boats carrying Jewish immigrants

were sent back and their passengers interned in Cyprus. Zertal (1998) argues that the

80,000 Holocaust survivors, who immigrated illegally to Palestine in 1945-8, were

instrumentalized by the Zionist leadership in its political struggle against the British.

Following the founding of the State of Israel, there was a period of mass migration

between 1948 and 1951. As Cohen (2002) points out, the demographic impact of the

arrival of nearly 700,000 Jews during this time, doubling the total Jewish population

in the nascent state and bringing it to 1.4 million, is analyzed without reference to the

concurrent Palestinian emigration. This emigration, brought about by the expulsion of

some 760,000 Palestinian Arabs, most of whom became refugees in neighboring Arab

countries, and the destruction of many of their villages lasted almost two years and

took place in two waves, from December 1947 to March 1948 and from April to June

1948 (Morris 1987). In essence, the comparable figures mean that the rapid Jewish

immigration resulted in the replacement of the Palestinian population. This meant a

reversal of the demographic balance between Arabs and Jews and a radical

geographical transformation of the mixed Arab-Jewish towns where, until mid-1949,

3
124,000 Jews were housed in vacant Arab homes, officially declared abandoned

property, and of the countryside across which “144 new Jewish communities were

established, many of them on or near destroyed Arab villages (Cohen 2002, 37).”

The period 1948-1951 was also characterized by a shift in the demography of the

Jewish population. Until 1948, 90 percent of Jewish immigrants originated in Europe.

While many of those to immigrate after May 15, 1948 were European Holocaust

survivors, by 1951, the percentage of Mizrahim (Oriental Jews) from Asia and Africa

had increased from 12% to 33%, some 300,000 individuals (Cohen 2002; Dominitz

1999). The very mission of the new state was based on the principle of Jewish

immigration, or what was referred to as the “ingathering of exiles.” The fact that

many new arrivals at this time came without capital or property adds to the

ideological nature of immigration as conceived by the State’s founders. The processes

of aliya and klita (absorption) were largely funded by international Jewish

organizations and the American and German governments as well as the Israeli state.

”Absorption” is a key Zionist concept to the extent of the existence of a Ministry for

Absorption, aimed to provide Jewish immigrants with housing, Hebrew language

training and a basket of financial measures easing their integration.

The principle of free Jewish immigration at the core of Zionist ideology was

institutionalized by the 1950 Law of Return. The law states that “every Jew has the

right to come to this country as an oleh (immigrant; literally ‘one who goes up’) (Law

of Return, 5710-1950)” and that all Jews have an automatic right to citizenship of the

State of Israel. Jews are classified according to the orthodox rabbinical definition,

which states that those born to a Jewish mother or who have converted to orthodox

4
Judaism are Jewish. Therefore, Israeli citizenship is founded on the principle of Jus

sanguinis, or “an ascriptive, ethnic-religious criterion based on identification which

includes Jews, children and grandchildren of Jews and their nuclear families, even if

the latter are not Jewish (Shuval 1998, 4).”

The Law of Return continues to be a source of contention to the present day. It has

come under attack mainly from those arguing for a Palestinian right of return which

would recognize the dispossession of the Palestinian people following 1948 and

accord the same right to Palestinians as that currently held only by Jews to return to

their land. It has also been critiqued in recent times by those arguing for a

multicultural Israeli state no longer exclusively based on Jewish citizenship. A repeal

of the Law of Return under this vision would recognize the fact that “worldwide

Jewry is no longer subject to the anti-Semitic attacks that plagued them during the

previous centuries (Altschul 2002, 1346).”

Following the foundational period in Israeli nation-building (1948-1951) and the

institutionalization of the Law of Return as the basis for Israeli citizenship,

immigration to the state continued to be characterized by several distinct periods. The

first of these stretched from 1952 to 1966. During this time, immigration declined, the

annual growth rate of the Jewish population going from 23.7 percent (1948-1951) to

3.5 percent (1952-1966). A sizeable number – 155,000 – out migrated (Neuman and

Ziderman, 2001). The largest numbers entering Israel during this period originated in

Romania and Morocco. This period was characterized by significant demographic

changes brought about by the arrival of North African Jews, mainly Moroccans,

which in Cohen’s terms, “accentuated the ethnic transformation of the Jewish state,

5
and helped maintain the Jewish majority in the face of the higher fertility rate of the

Arab minority (Cohen 2002, 39).”

The North African and Arab immigration proved to be the most problematic in

Israel’s history thus far, sharply highlighting the extent to which the State’s public

political culture was defined by an elite Ashkenazi (European Jewish) vision

(Kimmerling 2001). The mainly Moroccan-born arrivals added to the presence of the

entire Jewish populations of Yemen, Bulgaria, and Iraq which had been brought to

Israel during the previous period of mass immigration (Cohen 2002). During the

1950s and 1960s, the rising numbers of Mizrahim, a younger population with a higher

birth rate, resulted in the proportion of Ashkenazim to Mizrahim equalizing by the

early 1970s. However, Mizrahi Jews and, in particular the North Africans, were

stigmatized in Israeli society. Upon their arrival they were housed in transit camps

from which they were subsequently sent to so-called “development towns” often far

from the urban centers on confiscated Palestinian lands. Here they generally worked

in unskilled labor for low pay and at constant risk of unemployment (Kapeliouk

1997). Culturally, they were seen as inferior by the Ashkenazi elite and attempts were

made to strip them of their Arabic heritage and impose upon them a European vision

of modernized Israeli Jewry (Massad 1996). Both the geographical separation of

Mizrahim in the frontier regions and their subordination in ethnic and class terms

contributed to a strong segregationist element in Jewish Israeli society, thus

challenging the success of integration claimed by Israeli leaders and their supporters

in the Diaspora.

6
It was in relation to Mizrahim that the sentiment was publicly expressed in Israel for

the second time that immigration may not always constitute a good in itself.

Previously these beliefs had been expressed in relation to Holocaust survivors,

described by some Zionist emissaries to the Displaced Persons camps as “human

dust” and as “unfit human material” for immigration (Grodzinsky 1998). Massad

(1996, 58) quotes foreign minister Moshe Sharet who said in 1948, “there are

countries – and I was referring to North Africa – from which not all the Jews need to

emigrate. It is not a question of quantity but of quality...”Reactions to their

subjugation in Israeli society by Mizrahim began with the uprisings in Wadi Salib, a

formerly Arab district of Haifa which had become an overpopulated slum inhabited

mainly by Moroccans, over unequal housing conditions. By the end of the 1960s,

Mizrahi discontent was solidified in the Black Panther organization of so-called Black

Jews against Ashkenazi domination and the idea, expressed for example by Israel’s

first prime minister David Ben Gurion, that non-European Jews were devoid of

culture and education (Massad 1996).

Post-1967, the character of immigration changed once more. Economic development

made Israel much less a haven for Jews fleeing persecution and more “an attractive

destination country for immigrants seeking to improve their economic situation

(Cohen, 2002: 41).” Furthermore, following Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, some

200,000 Jews from North America, South Africa, Australia, Latin America and

Western Europe were ideologically motivated to immigrate to the country. The

occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the annexation of the Golan Heights

in 1967, creating a further mass of Palestinian refugees, enabled the establishment of

settlements populated by these ideological immigrants, many of whom held right-

7
wing, religious beliefs. It was only in later years, with the expansion of the settlement

of the occupied territories, that they came to be populated also by non-ideologically

motivated groups, encouraged mainly by cheap housing and other subsidies. This new

wave of ideological immigration was nevertheless dominated by individuals leaving

property and family in their countries of origin and preferring to come to Israel on

tourist visas or as temporary residents with a view to returning should their aliya fail.

As a result, of those arriving in the period between June 1969 and October 1970, 50

percent returned according to Ministry for Absorption statistics (Neuman and

Ziderman 2001). This phenomenon represents the gradual ‘normalization’ of

immigration in the Israeli context as most of those who left did so due to

unemployment or housing problems, factors which are nonetheless denied in official

discourse in which the aliya ethos continued to dominate.

The ideological commitment to immigration was once again fulfilled by the arrival of

Soviet Jews in the 1970s. Eighteen families, fuelled by a commitment to Jewish

identity and Zionist principles following the events of 1967, submitted an appeal to

the UN Committee on Human Rights in November 1969 which resulted in the Soviet

Union permitting 150,000 Jews to leave for Israel. The Soviet Jews arriving in the

early 1970s were met with great enthusiasm, not least by the then Prime Minister

Golda Meir who proclaimed, “You are the real Jews. We have been waiting for you

for twenty-five years (cited in Massad 1996, 61).” The post-1967 Ashkenazi

immigration instigated a trend, lasting until the present day, which saw the decline in

the numbers of first and second generation Mizrahis and a stabilization of their

Ashkenazi counterparts. Furthermore, by 1983, 16% of the population was defined as

of “Israeli origin,” meaning born to Israeli-born fathers; origin in official Israeli

8
definitions always being based on the country of birth. The choice of these terms of

definition and the decision to trace it back only one generation must be seen within

the context of the Israeli nation-building project and the construction of the figure of

the Israeli. It “results in the elimination of ancestry and ethnicity from official

statistics within two generations, or about fifty years (Cohen 2002: 42).”

The dominance of Europeans in Jewish immigration to Israel in the period from 1967

to the 1990s was significantly interrupted only by the arrival of the Jews of Ethiopia

in two airlift operations, the first in 1984, the second in 1991. Numbering

approximately 80,000, Ethiopian Jews were mainly housed in absorption centers in

development towns upon their arrival. Several thousand now live in settlement towns

in the occupied territories. Their integration into Israeli society continues to be a

difficult process, the community facing racism and discrimination, including crippling

rates of unemployment.

The most well-known and numerically significant of the recent immigration waves to

Israel is that of the Jews of the former Soviet Union. Between 1990 and 1998, the

Israeli population of 4.56 million was added to by 879,486 immigrants many of them

from the ex-USSR, a growth rate of 19.3% (Neuman and Ziderman 2001). The

majority of these arrived during the first two years, making a significant impact on

Israeli society and economy. The Israeli approach towards this new immigration

differed significantly from that adopted in the past. The State implemented a policy of

“direct absorption” under which state intervention through housing, education and

employment was no longer imposed (Razin and Scheinberg 2001). Due to the demand

it created for example in the construction industry, this mass immigration triggered

9
growth, pulling the country out of recession. While unemployment decreased by

1996, immigrants were not always employed according to their qualifications for

which demand was not high. Soviet immigrants were generally highly educated, many

of them holding professional qualifications. Nevertheless, in general Soviet

immigrants were equipped to adapt to a fast-changing modern economy and

contributed significantly to its growth during the 1990s (Kapeliuok 1997; Razin and

Scheinberg 2001).

The Soviet olim (immigrants) of the 1990s, unlike their predecessors who chose to

immigrate from the USSR in the 1970s, were not for the most part motivated by

ideology but rather by the promise of a better standard of living. Moreover, a

significant proportion are not Jewish but were admitted under the Law of Return

because they had Jewish relatives. This has led to a significant backlash against them,

in particular by the religious right-wing, elements of which even call for their

repatriation. In reaction, many Soviet immigrants have not wholeheartedly adopted an

Israeli identity, and have retained their own customs and, most importantly, the

Russian language, unofficially becoming the country’s third language after Hebrew

and Arabic. The immigrants of the former Soviet Union are also very well organized

politically. The most important of the political parties that represent them is the right-

wing Yisrael b’Aliyah (Israel in immigration), headed by the former dissident Nathan

Scharansky. Another side of the story of Soviet immigration is represented by

organizations such as the Russian Panthers, echoing the 1970s Israeli Black Panther

movement, which campaigns against the racism endured by Russian immigrants in

Israeli society which includes incidences of significant violence.

10
The Soviet immigration was accompanied by a further development in the history of

Israeli immigration: the arrival of foreign migrant workers from the early 1990s to the

present day (Rosenhek 2002). Migrants from Thailand, the Philippines, Romania,

China and Bulgaria among others started to arrive in Israel following Israel’s decision

to seal the border with the Occupied Territories in 1993. This led to the traditional

Palestinian blue-collar workers no longer being able to freely access their workplaces

in Israel. While it was hoped for a time that Soviet immigrants would fill the place of

Palestinian workers, it soon became apparent that the mostly over-qualified Russians

had no intention of doing so-called “Arab work (Bartram 1998).” At present there are

an estimated 300,000 migrant workers in Israel, representing 13 percent of the

workforce (Ellman and Laacher 2003). Of these at least two-thirds are illegally

residing in Israel, having entered the country as tourists (Africans and Latin

Americans in particular) or having an expired work permit.

Migrant workers are generally recruited in their country of origin by recruitment

agencies on behalf of Israeli employers for fixed-term contracts in a variety of sectors,

in particular construction, agriculture and domestic services. Once in Israel. they

become the property of their employers who generally confiscate their passports,

making them illegal as soon as they leave their place of employment (Israeli law

requires foreign nationals to carry their passports at all times). As soon as the contract

comes to an end whether at the end of the two year period or before it, due to

extenuating circumstances, the worker must officially return to his/her country or risk

becoming illegal. This risk is taken by the great majority. The presence of

undocumented workers in the Israeli economy has led to the instigation of a campaign

to deport them from the country. However, despite political commitments to end

11
migration, the continuing labor shortages brought about by the ongoing Israeli-

Palestinian conflict ensures that the Israeli employers’ lobby succeeds in by-passing

restrictions. Deported migrants are replaced by new recruits from the sending

countries and the parallel black economy and sex trade, fuelled by the ready source of

undocumented labor in the country, continues to grow.

The growing presence of non-Jewish migrants in Israeli society, also beginning to

demonstrate a political presence (Kemp et al 2000), is testimony to the fact that Israel

participates in the global migration regime as a primary destination for the

increasingly precarious globalized migrant labor force. Migrant workers in Israel,

albeit having no rights of citizenship, account for 8% of the population and will

continue to be a reality of the social formation of Israel in the future. There is also a

growing, if still small, number of asylum seekers in the country, particularly Africans,

despite the fact that Israel does not recognize political refugees. These combined

situations, in addition to the transformation of the nature of aliya brought about by the

Soviet immigration of the 1990s, backs Shuval’s (1998: 18) assertion that “the

mythology of Israel’s ‘uniqueness’ in the field of migration no longer seems

appropriate.“ While Israel officially only accepts Jewish immigrants, the reality posed

by migrants and asylum seekers, in addition to the significance of the Palestinian

presence within the “Green Line” (borders of Israel proper), may no longer support

the future existence of a uniquely Jewish state.

See also: Citizenship, Law of Return, Palestinian Refugees

Alana Lentin

12
References and Further Reading

Altschul, Mark J. 2002. “Israel’s Law of Return and the Debate of Altering,

Repealing, or Maintaining its Present Language.” University of Illinois Law

Review 2002, no. 5: 1345-1372.

Bartram, David V. 1998. “Foreign Workers in Israel: History and theory.”

International Migration Review 32, no. 2: 0303-0325.

Cohen, Yinon. 2002. “From Haven to Hell: Changing patterns of immigration to

Israel.”’ Pp. 36-53 in Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli

perspectives on immigration. Edited by Daniel Levy and Yfaat Weiss. Oxford

and New York: Berghahn Books.

Dominitz, Yehuda. 1999. “Immigration and Absorption of Jews from Arab

Countries.” Pp. 155-184 in The Forgotten Millions: The modern Jewish

exodus from Arab lands. Edited by Malka H. Shulewitz. London and New

York: Continuum.

Ellman, Michael and Laacher, Smain. 2003. Migrant Workers in Israel – A

contemporary form of slavery. Copenhagen and Paris: Euro-Mediterranean

Human Rights Network, International Federation for Human Rights.

Grodzinsky, Yosef. 1998. Khomer Enoshi Tov (Good Human Material). Or Yehuda:

Hed Artzi Publishing.

Kapeliouk, Amnon. 1997. “The Changing Pattern of Israeli Immigration.” Le Monde

Diplomatique http://mondediplo.com/1997/11/israel.

Kemp, Adriana, Raijman, Rebeca, Resnik, Julia and Schammah Gesser, Silvina. 2000.

“Contesting the Limits of Political Participation: Latinos and black African

migrant workers in Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 1: 94-119.

13
Kimmerling, Baruch. 2001. The invention and decline of Israeliness: State, society,

and the military. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Massad, Joseph. 1996. “Zionism’s Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews.”

Journal of Palestine Studies, 25, no. 4: 53-68.

Morris, Benny. 1987. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Neuman, Shoshana and Ziderman, Adrian. 2001. Can Vocational Education Improve

the Wages of Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups? The case of Israel, IZA

Discussion Series, IZA DP no. 348.

Razin, Eran and Scheinberg, Dan. 2001. “Immigrant Entrepreneurs From the Former

USSR in Israel: Not the traditional enclave economy.” Journal of Ethnic and

Migration Studies 27: 259-276.

Rosenhek, Zeev. 2002. “Migration Regimes and Social Rights: Migrant workers in

the Israeli welfare system.” Pp. 137-153 in Challenging Ethnic Citizenship:

German and Israeli perspectives on immigration. Edited by Daniel Levy and

Yfaat Weiss. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.

Shuval, Judith T. 1999. “Migration to Usrael: The mthology of ‘uniqueness’.”

International Migration 36, no. 1: 3-24.

Zertal, Idith. 1998. From catastrophe to power: Holocaust survivors and the

emergence of Israel. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press.

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