The Citizen and its Other: Zionist and Israeli Responses to Statelessness 1
<span class=“paragraphSection“>In 1924 the <span style=“font-style:italic;“>Kartell Jüdischer Verbindungen</span>, a German-Jewish, Zionist Student Fraternity founded a national branch in Mandate Palestine. By 1955, three decades later, many of the former fraternity students had immigrated to what had become the state of Israel. In that year, the “old boys” of this organization circulated a statement among its members now residing in Israel that was a direct reaction to the recent reparation agreements with Germany. The statement informed its recipients that whoever opted for renewal of his German citizenship and re-applied for a German passport would not be recognized as a full and honourable member of the “old boys’” and henceforth would be regarded as an outcast – which, in a fraternity, is the ultimate form of punishment. Those former German citizens, who had been stripped of their citizenship by National Socialist legislation and had lived for a time as stateless people, only acquired full citizenship again after the state of Israel was founded in 1948. This exemplifies the Jewish experience of statelessness in a number of ways. Thus a group of former German-Jewish fraternity members, in 1954 no longer stateless but Israeli citizens, were presented with an option for dual citizenship. They were born as citizens of one nation state – Germany – different from another, their state of residency – Israel. Both states had, and have, very specific nationality laws. Israel embraces all Jews as part of their national collective. Germany embraces all Germans as, potentially, part of their national collective. The Israeli Law of Return, passed in 1950 by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, states: “[E]very Jew has the right to come to this country as an <span style=“font-style:italic;“>oleh</span> [new immigrant].” The regulations accompanying this law made it a right that no Jew could be rejected. Entrance into Israel in order to reside there could only be allowed as an Israeli national,2<sup>2</sup> or one intending to adopt Israeli nationality, thus defining a concept of citizenship that is inclusive to the point of coercion and calling into question the idea of sovereignty.</span>