Voting for Israelis Abroad: Nationality Doesn't Stop at the Airport

Recently, I participated in a delegation of the Gesher organization to Jewish communities in the United States. It was not new for me to meet Jews who think differently than I do. What did catch me, however, was the encounter with people who invest real effort to stay connected to their Jewish identity. I met Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and also quite a few people who simply live their Judaism without getting into definitions. With some of them, I agree on almost everything, and with others, on almost nothing. But there was one thing I could not ignore: the effort. They work at being Jewish. In Israel, naturally, Judaism is in the air. It is in the language, in the calendar, on the street, and in the news. There, it requires a daily decision. It requires investment.

This journey made me think about a different kind of identity: Israeli identity. In recent days, a debate has arisen around Israelis living abroad who plan to arrive specifically to vote in the elections. Following this came a request from the Likud to the Central Elections Committee against an initiative to host voters from abroad for free, claiming it constitutes a benefit. Again and again, the argument returned: "You don't live here. You don't reside here. You will not decide for us."

It seems to me that we are conducting the wrong debate. Intuitively, this argument sounds logical. After all, whoever lives here with the cost of living, with the traffic jams, with the reserve duty, with the sirens, and with the ills of Israeli politics, is the one who is supposed to make the decisions. Very quickly, I understood that we are actually arguing about something entirely different: not just about voting patterns, but about Israeliness. They argue about Israel at the workplace or in educational institutions, deal with hostility since October 7, and quite a few of them also send their children to return to Israel for service in the IDF.

We are not talking here about every Jew in the world. We are talking about Israeli citizens who chose, at least at this stage of their lives, to live overseas. People who still hold Israeli citizenship, with family and friends in the country, and follow everything that happens here as if they never left. Their Israeliness does not stop at border control. And yet, in public discourse, we tend to measure belonging mainly by residential address. This is a logical concept in many countries. But Israel never defined itself as just another normal country. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Both those who believe, like me, that this connection stems from the Divine promise to the Land of Israel, and those who see it as a Zionist-historical idea, usually agree on one thing: the Israeli story never started with a residential address. Zionism did not arise only from the Yishuv in the Land of Israel. Zionism arose from a people that was scattered throughout the world, but saw the Land of Israel as its national home. Therefore, it is a bit strange for me to see how, in this very debate, we adopt a completely different concept: whoever lives here - belongs. Whoever does not live here - no longer does.

One can argue where the border should be, how many years abroad, or what conditions are required; that is a legitimate debate. But one cannot belittle people who spend thousands of shekels, lose work days, get on a plane, and fly for hours just to put a ballot in the box. Indifference does not look like that. Maybe they live far away. But they have not given up on their Israeliness. And ultimately, that is the real question: not just who is eligible to vote, but whether Israeliness is just an address, or if it is also an identity. If it is just an address, perhaps the critics are right. But if it is also an identity, then the nationality does not stop at Ben Gurion Airport.