Worthy Christian News > World News > State Links German Citizenship To Israel’s Right To Exist (Worthy News In-Depth)

State Links German Citizenship To Israel’s Right To Exist (Worthy News In-Depth)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BERLIN/MAGDEBURG/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Germany’s eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt now requires individuals seeking German citizenship to confirm in writing that they “recognize Israel’s right to exist and condemn any efforts directed against the existence of the State of Israel.”

Saxony-Anhalt Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang also urged Germany’s 15 other states to adopt similar rules, as the country accepted millions of migrants, including many from Muslim nations that have tense relations with Israel.

An internal memo of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle seen by Worthy News also requires its staff and contributors to sign similar pledges and stay away from antisemitism or biased reporting on Israel.

Zieschang previously said her ministry had sent a decree to all Saxony-Anhalt municipalities informing them of the policy in late November.

The decree instructs authorities to monitor closely whether an applicant has antisemitic attitudes. It states that “obtaining German citizenship requires a commitment to Israel’s right to exist.”

Local authorities have been told to deny applicants’ naturalization requests if they refuse to sign the declaration. A refusal must also be documented in the individual’s application filing for future reference.

The Saxony-Anhalt state Interior Ministry confirmed that naturalization will be denied to foreigners who engage in activities directed at Germany’s liberal democratic order as outlined in the country’s Basic Law or constitution. A denial of Israel’s right to exist and antisemitism are included among such activities, officials say.

ANTISEMITIC

The measure follows recent antisemitic incidents in Germany, which still reels from its role in the Holocaust, the Shoah, in which more than six million Jews were killed.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country have become flashpoints for antisemitic behavior following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel, according to law enforcement authorities.

Often, protesters shout slogans such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” seen as a call to destroy Israel and exterminate Jews. Other European countries have reported similar issues, including the Netherlands, where the anti-Islam PVV became the largest party in recent elections.

The Netherlands and other nations are due to closely follow legislative developments in Germany, the European Union’s largest economy.

Saxony-Anhalt, where the Israel’s-right-to-exist measure was introduced, was also the scene of a 2019 synagogue attack that killed two people. The perpetrator, however, was a right-wing German extremist, investigators concluded.

Germany has called Israel’s security its own “Staatsräson,” or “reason of state,” as then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed in an address to the Israeli parliament in 2008.

It was not immediately when and if other German states would follow Saxony-Anhalt’s example.

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE

However, the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, is to debate this month a law intended to speed up and ease the naturalization process. The legislation reportedly allowed new citizens to hold on to their original passports.

But the debate was put off in November after the Hamas attacks on October 7 in Israel killed about 1,200 people while some 240 persons were taken hostage.

Some German politicians argued that a rise in domestic antisemitism did not allow for relaxed citizenship laws.

“Without a doubt, the new law will have some words about antisemitism, whereby a citizenship application could be denied not only because of violence or a violation of the law, but if there is some information about antisemitic attitudes,” Bundestag member Helge Lindh told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency media outlet.

But it wasn’t clear whether a planned national law would also require a signed statement of loyalty to Israel, noted Lindh, who is rapporteur for migration and asylum policies for the Social Democratic Party, the center-left party led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

A national loyalty statement was reportedly proposed after the October 7 massacres. Yet critics claimed it would target people of Arabic or Muslim background and that it would be a safer bet legally to focus on the antisemitism litmus test.

“People have to sign their support of the constitution already,” Lindh stressed, adding that, “many specialists say that just to confirm you are not antisemitic does not mean you are not antisemitic.”

STRANGE DEVELOPMENT

The new law in Saxony-Anhalt “is a quite strange development,” he argued. “Citizenship law is a federal law. In the end, it does not make sense if you have different rules for citizenship in the different German states.”

Some Israel advocates are still celebrating the new state law. “I think it is amazing, and it is something I would expect from every state,” said Sacha Stawski, president and founder of the Frankfurt-based pro-Israel initiative Honestly Concerned. Although there are legal grounds for denying citizenship, “Germany has been extremely lenient in all states regarding this issue,” he said. “We don’t need any more antisemites in this country; really, we don’t.”

Germany is the world’s third largest refugee-hosting country, with 2.2 million refugees and a critical resettlement nation, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, about 1 million refugees from that country have received temporary protection in Germany, according to UNHCR and German estimates.

Yet most refugees arriving in Germany previously are Muslims, including from nations denying Israel’s right to exist. About 1.3 million migrants reportedly came last year, a roughly 35 percent increase from 2015 when 890,000 migrants and refugees, mainly fleeing the Syrian war, went to the country during Europe’s refugee crisis.

In addition to more than one million Ukrainian war refugees, some 244,000 asylum-seekers arrived from elsewhere in 2022— mainly from Muslim nations Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq, according to German records.

Earlier this year, a refugee summit failed to overcome an impasse among Germany’s federal, state, and local governments, prolonging what critics say is “an untenable situation.”