The Israel Population and Immigration Authority is preventing immigration and working to deport an American Jew, claiming he does missionary activities.
The American citizen is a Messianic Jew who founded non-profit organizations in the US to assist the Messianic Jewish community. He claims those organizations did not proselytize and closed due to the death of his son.
In the 1970s, the Law of Return was passed and stated that even someone who is not Jewish could receive Israeli citizenship if at least one of their grandparents were Jewish. Many immigrants from the former Soviet Union received citizenship through this clause.
Adv. Joshua Pex, who represents the US citizen in his appeal against the Interior Ministry, claims that the Population and Immigration Authority, which is under the aegis of the ministry, is not only denying his client from making Aliya, but it also recently ordered him to leave Israel within the next month.
Pex stated that his client, a 75-year-old retiree, wishes to immigrate to Israel but is being stopped by the authorities, even though his grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz because she was a Jew and despite the fact that his grandfather escaped the Nazis.
According to Adv. Pax, the authority's claim is based on false information, and in any case, the Law of Return does not allow them to refrain from granting citizenship for such a reason. According to the petition, the man is the son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother and the grandson of a grandfather and grandmother whose Jewishness is unquestionable.
He claims that one of the reasons he wants to move to Israel is that, in recent years, he has personally felt the rise in antisemitism in the US due to his Jewish identity and public support for the State of Israel.
Adv. Pex is asking the Population and Immigration Authority to recant its decision and grant the claimant the status of a new immigrant and allow him and his wife to live in Israel.