What is the Law of Return and why does it exist?
The State of Israel was established with the goal of providing a homeland for every Jew in which they could live as free and equal citizens without fear of discrimination on the basis of their religious beliefs or ethnic background. The need for a homeland for the Jewish people was apparent after centuries of unequal treatment and persecution. It was recognized by the international community in 1922, when the League of Nations adopted the Mandate to Administer Palestine and in 1947, when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan). The Law of Return (1950), which states “every Jew has the right to immigrate to the country,” thereby fulfilled both the will of the international community and the goal of the Zionist movement. As the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel says, the Jewish state was to be founded by virtue of the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state.
