Never heard of the “thefp”, but I would be very careful with their content.
The article in OP links to another article from the same source “The Fantasy World of Ta-Nehisi Coates” by Coleman Hughes.
Irrespective on where you stand on Israel/Palestine or your opinion of Ta-Nehisi Coates or his book. There is a basic disregard of facts in “The Fantasy World” article.
There is a discussion of an Israeli law on marriage with foreigners. The author claims that it is limited to nationality (emphasis mine):
For instance, as an example of Israel’s Jim Crow–like “two-tier society,” he asserts that “Jewish Israelis who marry Jews from abroad needn’t worry about their spouses’ citizenship,” whereas the state “tracks Palestinian noncitizens through a population registry” and “bars Palestinian citizens from passing on their status to anyone on that registry—abroad or in the West Bank.”
The implication conveyed by this sentence—that Israeli law treats Arab Israelis differently than Jewish Israelis—is simply not true. The law in question is neutral as regards the race of the citizen attempting to naturalize his or her foreign spouse. **The restriction is instead based on the nationality of the spouse. **
Passed during the Second Intifada, the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law erected barriers to one’s spouse obtaining Israeli citizenship if that spouse was from the West Bank or Gaza. This becomes understandable once you consider that the law was passed in 2003, after a Hamas member who had received an Israeli identity card by marriage blew himself up in a restaurant, killing 16 Israelis. Nor was this an isolated example. Since 2001, 155 Palestinians brought into Israel in this way (before the 2003 ban took effect) have been involved in terror attacks.
But the actual link provided by the author himself for more information on the law explicitly contradicts this.
The aim of the law was to prevent terrorists from entering Israel and becoming citizens as well as to preserve the nation’s Jewish character.
Demography was a consideration as well. “According to demographer Arnon Sofer, had the process [of giving Palestinians marrying Israelis citizenship] continued unabated, 200,000 Palestinians would receive Israeli citizenship in the first decade alone, and the number of Palestinians in Israel would rise exponentially due to the law and high population growth. Within sixty years, Jews would be a minority within Israel (not including the West Bank and Gaza Strip), effectively destroying the Jewish character of the state.”
A bit of tangent, but I was surprised by the level of sloppiness (and the contrast with the “serious” writing style).
