Israel approves citizenship law

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Israel approves citizenship law

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Israel passed a law to ease the process of revoking citizenship.

29 March,2011 08:40 pm

The amendment to the so-called Citizenship Law was the latest of a list of parliamentary measures taken this past month which civil rights activists denounce as undemocratic but Israeli hawks see as essential to the nations defence.The amendment, which passed by a vote of 37 to 11 after a stormy debate, empowers Israeli judges to deny citizenship privileges to anyone convicted of espionage or committing violence with nationalistic motives.An official explanatory text said that the law was intended to expand the possibility of denying citizenship and empowers the court that convicts someone of crimes of acts of terror, espionage or treason to be stripped of citizenship.The author of the law, Knesset Member David Rotem from the rightist Yisrael Beiteinu faction believes that a person who acts against his own country cannot remain its citizen. Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi, said the law was racist. Racism is now a central movement in Israel. For thats reason some of the racists are now foreign minister, deputy prime minister and interior minister. Therefore (almost) every week there is a racist law against the Arab citizens (inside Israel), once they try to prevent us by law from commemorating Al Nakba (Arabic word for catastrophe, referring to Israels founding in 1948), then prevent us from living in villages and national towns and now they are giving the court the right to revoke the citizenship from the Arab citizens, Tibi said.Israels Association for Civil Rights condemned the bill. Israeli Arabs, who make up about a fifth of Israels mostly Jewish population, are descendants of Palestinians who remained in what is now Israel when hundreds of thousands were driven away or fled in a 1948 war over Israels establishment.