The project, dubbed "Coming Home," will try to lure Israelis living abroad to come back with tax breaks, employment and small business loans.
About 650,000 Israelis live abroad, 450,000 of them in North America, the ministry said. The ministry began contacting them last month with direct phone calls, an Internet site and a "hot line" phone connection.
Coming directly on the heels of the bizarre NIE report that has apparently ended American will to confront Iran and prevent the mullahs from getting nukes, this campaign is doubly bizarre.
Back in May 2006, I commented on a Krauthammer article that noted that gathering in the Jews to Israel was a solution to an old problem that makes no sense in the current environment. Said Krauthammer:
But, in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration -- putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work.
His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders' pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be destroyed "by a single storm,'' as Ahmadinejad has promised.
Promoting the concentration of Israelis and Jews in Israel is tantamount to cooperating with an enemy that has all but declared their intent to nuke Israel. Indeed, that post quoted an earlier post of mine from over two years ago where I argued the same thing in a post regarding Gaza:
On a related matter, with settlers pulled out of Gaza, shouldn't the settlers reconsider their mission? When their own state seemed the only way to preserve the safety of Jews after the Holocaust, it made sense to have a state that could protect Jews if nobody else would. But when the threat of nuclear weapons held by Islamofascist nutballs looms over Israel, is massing in one small state the safest thing to do? Settlers providing buffer zones against Arab armies makes no sense now. Israel is conventionally superior to any conceivable combination of invaders.
Really, the settlers might want to consider scattering across the globe in communites that can rebuild Israel just in case jihadis get a few nukes into Israel.
In today's environment, Israel needs a Reconstitution Ministry more than an Immigration Absorption Ministry. The Israeli government should be working to make sure the Israelis abroad stay connected to Israel emotionally and committed to Israel's continuity in case of the worst.
The goal should be a virtual Israel--complete with whatever military and governmental power that can exist without an actual state--that could raise an actual Israel from the ashes of the Middle East--no matter how long that would take--should Iran's nutso mullahs get their greatest wish of nuking Israel.
