A day after police revealed that a wanted Russian criminal who made aliya under false pretenses was behind the October 17 murder of six members of the Oshrenko family in Rishon Lezion, politicians traded blows Tuesday on the connection between aliya and crime.
On one side, MK Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) blasted the Law of Return as "a cover for the arrival of unwanted persons," while on the other, lawmakers representing immigrant voter demographics rushed to condemn Sheetrit's approach as unfair and racist.
Sheetrit, who has served as both interior minister and justice minister, complained that under current conditions, those who wish to make aliya can "easily bypass the Jewish factor" by procuring fake papers proving their Judaism. "When I became interior minister I suggested amendments to the Law of Return," he told Army Radio.
"Every Jew who wishes to make aliya should live in [Israel] as a resident for a period of five years, and become a citizen only after learning Hebrew, studying the laws of the country and pledging allegiance to it," asserted Sheetrit.
"The Law of Return should stop being a cover for the arrival of unwanted persons," he said, adding that 350,000 non-Jews, among them "pimps, smugglers, prostitutes and terrorists," were living in the country with forged paperwork.
"It's an outrage," he said, explaining that the Interior Ministry does not have sufficient resources to perform a background check on every individual wishing to make aliya.
Sheetrit added that when, as a minister, he tried to reform the aliya process, his suggestions met with criticism "on all fronts."
On Monday, he once again was met with quick condemnation after re-airing the same suggestions.
Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver (Israel Beiteinu) described those who generalize about immigrants as carrying out a "witch hunt," and said that their statements were "nothing other than racism that has no place in Israeli society of the 21st century.
"Someone here has lost all sense of perspective and conscience," she said.
Landver said she is very concerned about attempts by political and media figures to incite the discussion surrounding the Oshrenko murders in the direction of besmirching the immigrant public, which "in the course of the past two decades has made an unrecognized and positive change to the face of the public and the state and has made a great contribution to them, for Israel to pass from the 'club' of developing countries to the 'club' of developed ones."
"All of the talk about the supposed need to 'toughen up checks into potential immigrants' and to 'place a checkpoint before the immigration of murders,' and even to change the Law of Return, it is nothing more than pathetic and racist expressions that draw a parallel between the origins of an entire public and their alleged criminal inclinations," Landver said.
"These efforts are liable to steer our society into directions that none of us would like to imagine. I reject with disgust these racist expressions and call on our society to come to its senses and to do everything to bring about more immigration and to absorb them with an open and warm embrace, and not to reject them through faulty assumptions. It seems to me that someone has lost their conscience and direction."
Landver's fellow representative from Israel Beiteinu, MK Moshe Matalon, echoed her words later on Tuesday, saying that "the contribution of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israeli society has been felt in the fields of culture, education, sport and all of the other fields of life. Similarly, their contribution to the sensitive demographic situation in which Israel is situated can not be ignored. I condemn strongly any who attempt to cast aspersions against this aliya."
On Monday, MK Marina Solodkin told The Jerusalem Post that - unlike fellow Kadima member Sheetrit - her criticism was not directed toward the Law of Return, and that she believed that the laws currently on the books were not problematic and were in fact sufficient. Instead, she argued, the various government offices and ministries involved should "look into their links on the chain of failures" that led to the murders in Rishon Lezion.
Solodkin also said that she knew of a number of cases in which aliya applicants changed their names to flee their countries of birth.
