Israel recently announced the creation of a new national holiday to celebrate the arrival of Jewish immigrants to the country, suggesting that Israeli Jews continue to live their lives in a state dedicated to the displacement of another people and the absorption of their land. Israel's Knesset passed the new holiday into law, National Aliyah Day, after 21 lawmakers outvoted five who were opposed. The holiday will begin in late October or early November each year. Aliyah, one of the most basic tenets of Zionism, literally means "the act of going up" while the opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to in Hebrew as "descent". So, to Israelis, a permanent move to Israel means one is moving up in the world, while one is going down in life if you leave the state. Immigration from western Europe to Israel hit all-time highs in 2015 as the perception that Jews felt threatened in the continent grew. Nearly 10,000 Jews, mostly from France, immigrated in 2015, especially after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Benjamin Netanyahu has been very vocal in urging Jews around the world to go to Israel, which he claims is the best place, the safest place, the only place for Jewish people to live. But can Netanyahu be believed? He urges Jews around the world to immigrate to Israel where, he says, they will be safe forever, while simultaneously warning the world of a nuclear threat from Iran to Israel. He has encouraged particularly French and Danish Jews to move to the safety of a country under apparent siege from, at one time, near daily attacks on Israelis by Palestinians. Around 40 percent of recent immigrants to Israel consider returning to their countries of origin. Six out of 10 new immigrants polled responded that the primary barrier to employment in Israel is a lack of knowledge regarding the Israeli job market, with an additional 28 percent citing language difficulties. An overwhelming majority of 88 percent said having good personal connections is the primary factor involved in obtaining a job in the country (like a Third World country Israel often says it isn't) while only 24 percent said that this is the case abroad. Some like to compare Israel's founding with that of the United States but Israel is not the US. America was a territory not on the charts when it was discovered by Christopher Columbus. It was almost uninhabited except by thinly spread out American Indians. Palestine was a country full of Palestinians when Israel invaded it in 1948. Like a true vacation pamphlet, Jewish agencies promise immigrants to Israel the moon. They tell parents that their children have no future in their own country and that their only future is in Israel; that their kids would not have to join the Israeli army, that the family would have a great opportunity to learn a new profession and would get an apartment, and that the educational standard in Israel is much higher than even countries like Germany and that education would be free. They claim the Israeli healthcare system is the best in the world and families would be given discounts and benefits and electrical appliances and that, after they finished learning basic Hebrew, they would be given almost $800. But many of these PR promises are never kept, as shown by the myriad of complaints of new immigrants. Too many Israelis seem to believe – indeed, to take absolutely for granted – that they have the God-given right to occupy, suppress, disenfranchise and displace non-Jews in Israel. These people coming to Israel have little understanding of Israel. Many can't speak the language and know nothing of the country's fragmented systems. To ask them to close shop in their country and open up shop in Israel simply to beef up Israel's population numbers is not fair to the immigrant or to the Palestinian whose place was taken by the immigrant.
