Is Israel's 'Law of Return' racist?

Many states define their immigration policies based on their own specific context, history and ethnic or national character. In every generation throughout its history, the Jewish people have suffered persecution and expulsion. This situation culminated in the Holocaust, a genocide from which the Jews of Europe found no place of refuge. One of the primary goals of the Zionist movement was to create one state in the world, which would be a national home for the Jewish people, and a refuge which would, by definition, be open to Jewish immigration. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, one of its most urgent challenges was to absorb hundreds of thousands of stateless Jewish refugees who had been forced from their homes and lost everything in the Holocaust. At the same time it had to absorb over 850,000 Jews who fled rising persecution or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands after the 1948 War of Independence. Israel duly passed a law – The Law of Return – which granted the right of citizenship to any Jew who wished to live in Israel. Whilst the traditional religious definition of a Jew is someone who has a Jewish mother, the law of return takes a broader definition. In Nazi Germany, individuals were murdered as Jews if they had even one Jewish grandparent, and that is why the State of Israel defines a Jew for the purposes of the right of return as anyone with one Jewish grandparent. The principle is that anyone who could be persecuted for being Jewish ought to have the right of refuge. This policy has facilitated the immigration of diverse ethnic groups, not just white Europeans. Mass immigration from Asian and African countries, including Yemen, Iraq, Libya, India and Ethiopia, testifies to the non-racial character of the Law of Return. Israeli law does not distinguish between Israeli citizens on the basis of the origin of their citizenship; ‘returning’ Jewish citizens enjoy no preferences over existing non-Jewish citizens.