James Schneider could board a flight to Tel Aviv tomorrow and leave the airport well on his way to becoming an Israeli citizen. On October 12, he used that very right to accuse the Jewish state of racism.
“A Palestinian violently expelled from their home during the Nakba cannot return,” Schneider wrote on X. “But as a British Jew, I can move to Israel and become a citizen. That is racism.”
Schneider, a British left-wing activist and former communications adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, presented the Law of Return as a privilege for Jews and a door slammed on Palestinians. The response on X was swift. Commentator Alex Gandler called the post “an extraordinary admission of ignorance about why Israel exists.”
Gandler has a point. Schneider’s post leaves out the history behind the law, the international law that protects it, and the Jews it has saved.
A law born of homelessness
The Knesset passed the Law of Return on July 5, 1950, two years after Israel declared independence. It allows Jews from anywhere in the world to make aliyah (Hebrew for “ascent,” the word for immigrating to Israel) and become citizens.
The idea did not begin with Israel. In 1922, the League of Nations gave Britain responsibility for governing the land then called Palestine. It specifically instructed Britain to encourage Jewish immigration and to make it easier for Jews who settled there to become citizens. When Israel passed the Law of Return, it built on a commitment the international community had already made: the Jewish people had a right to return to their ancestral homeland.
Every nation chooses its citizens
International law recognizes every country’s right to decide who qualifies for citizenship. The UN Convention Against Racial Discrimination protects that right, as long as a country’s citizenship laws do not discriminate against people of a particular nationality.
The Law of Return meets that standard easily. A Jew from America, Ethiopia, France or Iran qualifies under the same law. No nationality is shut out.
Israel is also far from alone. Ireland, Finland, Germany, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and other democracies give their ethnic kin abroad privileged access to immigration and citizenship. No one accuses Dublin or Athens of racism for keeping a door open to their own people. Schneider reserves that charge for the Jewish state.
Equal citizens, whatever their origin
Schneider’s argument also confuses two separate things. The Law of Return decides who may immigrate. It does not decide who counts as a full citizen.
Arab Israelis vote and hold office with the same rights as Jewish Israelis. Arabs have been elected to every Knesset since the 1960s. In 2004, Salim Joubran became the first Arab citizen appointed permanently to Israel’s Supreme Court. The only legal difference between Arab and Jewish citizens is a duty, not a right: Arab citizens are exempt from compulsory military service.
The refugees Schneider forgot
Schneider invokes the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe.” But the war that created the Palestinian refugee problem was a war Israel did not choose. Israel accepted the 1947 UN partition plan. The Arab states rejected it, and immediately after Israel declared independence in 1948, five Arab armies invaded to destroy the new state. Arabs fled or were displaced during that war. The term “Nakba” itself first described the Arab armies’ defeat.
That war produced a second wave of refugees, one the world rarely mentions. Jewish communities that had lived in Arab lands for centuries, and in some cases thousands of years, faced persecution, violence, confiscation of property and expulsion. Approximately 850,000 Jews fled or were forced out of Arab countries and Iran, including 259,000 from Morocco and 135,000 from Iraq. Many found refuge in Israel, where they received citizenship and rebuilt their lives. None of them has a “right of return,” and no one is demanding one on their behalf.
Schneider’s claim that Palestinians “cannot return” implies that Israel is denying them a guaranteed legal right. No such right exists in binding international law. In 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which recommended that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so. It was a recommendation, not a binding obligation. The Arab states themselves voted against it. Only later did Palestinian advocates turn it into the foundation of their demand for return.
A refuge in real time
The Law of Return is not a relic of 1950. It is working today.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, thousands of Jews and their families suddenly faced an uncertain future. Israel offered them a place to rebuild. Within three months of the invasion, more than 21,000 people eligible under the Law of Return had arrived from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, including over 10,000 from Ukraine alone. Most had already become Israeli citizens.
That is the difference the law makes. Those families did not have to remain refugees, waiting to learn how long a host country would let them stay. They became citizens of a country ready to welcome them home.
“Israel was created so that the survival of Jews in danger would never again depend entirely on the goodwill of others,” Gandler wrote.
The point of the law
For centuries, Jews faced persecution and expulsion with nowhere to go. Even as Jews were being murdered in the Holocaust, countries around the world closed their doors to Jewish refugees.
The establishment of Israel changed that. For the first time in nearly 2,000 years, Jews had a country where they could seek refuge without asking another nation’s permission. The Law of Return guarantees that right.
Schneider calls the law discriminatory because it gives Jews a right that others do not have. But that is exactly why it exists. He may never need the protection it offers. If he ever does, Israel will welcome him too.
