Israel’s Nationality Law: The Prequel

In April 1938, the British parliament was asked to approve a Jewish Citizenship Bill that would enable Jews worldwide to become nationals of Mandatory Palestine, where the Jewish national home had yet to be established in accordance with the 1922 League of Nations mandate. Though the bill failed to pass, with Parliament split right down the middle — 144 supporters and 144 naysayers — opposition stemmed not from rejection of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people, but fear of Arab retribution. It is saddening that what was taken for granted decades before Israel’s establishment has come to be widely questioned 70 years after the Jewish state came into existence.

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