A question of Jewish ethics

EDGAR ASHER ISRANET

Israel's Interior Ministry often has the unenviable task of deciding who can stay in the country and, perhaps, in the fullness of time, even receive citizenship. For a Jewish person, providing they come under the ministry guidelines, which allow Jews the automatic right to Israeli citizenship, there is no real problem – and nor should there be.

Many non-Jewish individuals have come to Israel from such countries as Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines and India. Usually, they have arrived on a tourist visa, but their main aim is to get work to support their families at home. Many of the individuals are duped into coming to Israel by unscrupulous middle men in their own country, who arrange flights to Israel and loan the unsuspecting person money to buy the air tickets at inflated rates of interest. Only when they arrive here do they learn that it is not easy to obtain a work visa, which allows them to obtain legal employment and, thus, legally stay in the country.

The foreign workers, particularly from the Philippines and India, have tended to make excellent caregivers, exhibiting untold patience and sympathy for many of Israel's older and more infirm citizens. They have been, on the whole, reliable, law-abiding, hardworking, honest and warm individuals; some have been living in Israel for more than 10 years, have married here and have had children. Israelis are reluctant to do the menial jobs that such foreign workers are prepared to undertake.

Over the past few years, the Interior Ministry has been working overtime to rout out these unfortunate people and send them back to their country of origin. This action was obviously not good for the illegal workers or their frail employers. After they left the country, there was a job vacuum with no one to fill it.

Recently, a copy of a letter from the Interior Ministry to a Congolese worker and his South African wife was published in the Israeli press. Oscar and Brigitte Oliver have been living in Israel for the past 13 years, after arriving here originally on a tourist visa. They have a four-year-old daughter, Esther, who was born in Israel and speaks Hebrew. The letter from the ministry stated that Esther had to leave Israel within 60 days, as she was born nine months after a government deadline that allowed children of foreign workers to remain in Israel on a permanent residency visa. The irony of the situation is that Oscar and Brigitte Oliver have such a permanent residency visa and, in their own words, "have contributed to Israeli society in many ways and do not have any criminal record." It is clear that if Esther is forced to leave, her parents will have to go as well.

It is a pity that Oscar Oliver is not a professional soccer player, because then the Interior Minister, Ronni Bar-On, would himself would have approved full citizenship for the Oliver family, just as he did for Toto Tamuz Temile, who was born in Nigeria in 1988 and now plays for Beitar Jerusalem Football Club. Temile's father, Clement, was a Nigerian soccer player who came to Israel in 1990. Once here, he started playing soccer, but he left Israel in 1991 after the football team he played for ran into financial difficulties, forcing him to find odd jobs to make ends meet. He left three-year-old Temile behind in the care of a former teammate. When it became clear that Clement Temile was not coming back to Israel, his son was unofficially looked after by Irit Tamuz.

Even before the ink was dry on Temile's citizenship papers, the Interior Ministry was approving full citizenship for Roberto Colautti, born in 1982 in Cordoba, Argentina. Since 2004, he has been playing soccer for Maccabi Haifa. In 2006, Colautti, who also has Italian ancestry, married an Israeli.

Both Temile and Colautti have been granted citizenship because the international football federation, FIFA, demands that national team players of any country hold full citizenship of that country. A well-placed letter by the Israel Football Association chairman went a long way to helping the interior minister to decide in favor of Temile and Colautti.

There is nothing really wrong with the action of the Interior Ministry regarding the soccer players, but does their wish to be Israeli citizens have any more merit than that of little Esther Oliver?

Every country has to have regulations regarding citizenship, but if the Interior Ministry is going to make exceptions for two soccer players, neither of whom were born in Israel, it has to make an exception for children born here – irrespective of their religion, ethnic background or color. That is what Jewish ethics is all about.

^TOP