Israel approves plan to lure 15,000 expats home

'Haaretz' reports: "A new plan to encourage the return of some 15,000 Israeli expatriates from abroad received government approval on Sunday." Elsewhere in the article the paper states: "Under the new plan, returning Israelis will receive many of the same tax benefits given to new immigrants, including breaks on import and income taxes. Returnees will not have to pay for health insurance for the first six months in Israel, like new immigrants."

Well, with some 750,000 Israelis living abroad and 20% of Israel's population being Palestinian, wouldn't it really be something if 15,000 Arab Israelis got together and decided on a mass return. Not, I am sure, what Sofa Landver the head of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, who originally hails from St.Petersburg and represents Avigdor Lieberman's "Yisrael Beiteinu" party means when she says: "Bringing Israelis home is an important Zionist task. The government sees the return of Israelis as a national, societal and economic interest." Still, it would be interest to see how the clumsy clowns in Jerusalem would cope with it. Of course, we know how they would cope with it and if they are not going to let Norman Finkelstein and Naom Chomsky enter the country, who are by their own definition, two secular Jews both of whom have the right to apply for Israeli citizenship, they would most certainly not let 15,000 Arabs into the country despite their Israeli passports.