by Steven Shamrak

Israel is trying to persuade hundreds of thousands of its citizens living overseas to return home (about 650,000 Israelis live abroad). The project, dubbed “coming home”, will try to lure Israelis living abroad to come back with tax breaks, employment and small business loans. “Every Israeli, even if he lives abroad, is Israeli at heart and knows that his home is here. I call on all Israelis to return home,” Olmert said. This is another misguided publicity stunt of the desperate, politically bankrupt government.

First of all it should be, “Every Jew,” not just Israeli, Mr. Olmert. And the way things go there will be, G-d forbid, no Israel to come home to, as corrupt, leftist self-haters continue the implementation of the current policy of national self-obliteration.

Jewish Israelis have been leaving Israel and Jews are delaying their decision to make aliyah not because of the need for financial incentives, but mainly because of a mafia-style bureaucracy, absence of national pride among politicians, artificial economic and political hardships which are imposed on people in order to hide wide-spread governmental corruption and, most importantly, due to lack of direction toward the future establishment of Eretz-Israel.

At the same time, the governments of Israel have become expert implementers of the “divide and conquer” principle, another reason why many Jews left Israel. Some 50 years ago it was Ashkenazi versus Sephardim; 30 years ago “Russians” versus Sabras and “Moroccans.” Lately, the self-hating ruling elite have been using the secular versus religious Zionists (”extremists”) card. As soon as Jews realize that we share a common destiny, no one will be able to manipulate and divide us. The achievement of our national dream will become an easy task.

Jews always were drawn to Palestine because they knew that it is their land and that they could build a Jewish homeland on the land of their ancestors. During the War of Independence, Holocaust survivors, who had just come to Israel, attacked enemy positions with wooden sticks, due to lack of the weapons, to make this dream come true.

Nowadays, people are reluctant to live in a country where strings of governments have been systematically wrecking her future, with politicians who care only about their own pockets and ego, completely disrespecting the national and religious inspiration of the Jewish people. Jews want to live in their own country with respect, decency and security — not as a demographic statistic, which allows the government to continue the peace process charade. There would be no need for any lure for Jews to come to live in Israel if we had a decent national leadership in Israel and in the Diaspora as well.

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Related: Israel, Judaism

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