It was only a matter of time until dignitaries like Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky told their colleagues not to call on French Jews to immigrate to Israel. Of course, both Livni and Sharansky want Jews to move to Israel, but not out of distress. Livni has no interest in Israel being perceived as a country of asylum. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of Zionism, and even of the exodus from Egypt. Israel is not any more a magnet than the Diaspora is a force expelling Jewry from its borders. What did Theodore Herzl promise? "A safe haven." And what is the justification for preferring Jewish immigration under the Law of Return? The need for a safe haven. That cannot be ignored. It is great to see those who are drawn to Israel by the poetry of Yehuda Halevi, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Naomi Shemer, but the great masses of Jewish people came to the Promised Land out of distress. Only 20 percent of the Jews left Egypt in Moses' time and the vast majority of the immigration from Germany was because of the growing power of the Nazis. It's true that our governments have not done enough in recent decades to encourage Jews to participate in the creation of sovereign Israeli and Hebrew culture. Livni was once immigrant absorption minister; Sharansky also dealt with this issue, and they both know this. But despite the new situation of Islamic terrorism that threatens the Jewish public, Israel's leaders are not exempt from the obligation to encourage the Jews to follow God's commandment to Abraham: "Go from your land, from your birthplace and from your fathers house, to the land which I will show you" (Genesis 12:1). Instead of objecting to the logical conclusion that now is the time to offer frightened Jews the opportunity for sovereignty and pride, and instead of ignoring the fact that this is the right time to urge the Jews who moved to Berlin to return home, they should do everything in their power to increase the flow of Jews to Israel. They should recall that while the Jews who came from Germany in the 1930s had almost no choice, they had the lowest rate of emigration from Israel of all immigrant communities. Those who do not want to call on Jews around the world to come to their homeland would do well to keep their thoughts to themselves and not sabotage the ingathering of the exiles -- a day which, according to Jewish tradition, is as important as the day the world was created.
