The Truth Behind the Foreign Workers Debate

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
25 Menachem Av 5770
05 August '10

Ben Dror Yemini is one of the few voices in Israel's mainstream press that dares side with the government's decision to return a small portion of children of foreign workers to their home countries. In a courageous article that he published Tuesday morning, Yemini delineates the problem and bemoans the fact that the absolute majority of public opinion shapers in Israel have adopted the populist position, while leaving the weak sector of society to pay the price. Yemini accuses the media, who with no exception show the sweet, foreign-looking children begging in perfect Hebrew to remain in Israel - of being strong against the weak. "Let's see them making room in their luxury apartments for five illegal worker families, and then we can talk," Yemini wrote.

Yemini is right, but the source of the problem lies much deeper.

The assumption is that the foreign workers problem is a technical problem. According to this approach, they have their reasons for entering Israel, there are quite a few businesses and institutions in Israel that are happy to employ them - and the government must find the proper balance between the different interests and human and social problems that are created as a result.

But if we look to see who dominates the campaign against the banishment of the foreign children, we quickly discover that they are not the representatives of senior-citizens homes or farmers desperate for more working hands. In other words, the motivation of the leaders of the struggle against the government is not economic. It is ideological. Interestingly, it is the very same elements that encourage the expulsion of Jewish children from their homes. And no amount of Jewish children's tears will change their views.

At its root, this is not a case of spoiled populism of public-opinion shapers on the backs of Israel's poor. This is the tip of the ideological iceberg of something much larger than the question of illegal immigration.

It is no surprise that many of the NGOs lobbying in the Knesset against returning the foreigners to their countries are funded by the New Israel Fund. They want a new Israel: an Israel bereft of national identity, a state of all its citizens, a state that is not Jewish.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.