NON-JEWS DO NOT MAKE ALIYA . . . What Kind of International Emblem of Peace??

Below is a picture of the Aliya Post published by The Jerusalem Post and delivered to all its English speaking subscribers, included with the Wednesday, August 31 paper edition. Upon a closer look at the woman descending the airplane steps, one can catch an emblem hanging from her neck. The emblem is a Cross

Is she making Aliya? Why does this picture depict a new immigrant making Aliyah as a Jew to Eretz Yisrael? I asked this same question of the editor of this publication.  Copy below:

My Email Letter to the Editor of the Aliya Post:
Email: roca@netvision.net.il
Shalom Juan (de la Roca)

Please clarify why the young lady on the cover of Aliya Post is wearing a t-shirt containing a non-Jewish Cross, or is it her necklace? Is this a Jewish woman? This should not have been. We are a Jewish Nation. The only one that cares about Jews. The only one where Jews can live without anti-semitism. Please explain and apologize.

While the magazine is thoughtful, these new immigrants need more practical advice to navigate the bureaucracy and be able to acclimate to a very challenging society. Practical grounded assistance is what they need. Invariably they will experience culture shock of some degree. This is when a[n immigrant] family needs a surrogate family to assist them and give them an ear and a warm meal.

Sincerely

And this was Senior Juan de la Roca’s reply:

Dear Madam.
Thank you for your comments we always welcome letters from our readers. With regard to your comments I read them very carefully and I fully agree with the second part.

In future issues we will have more practical info.

But while I very much agree with the second paragraph I totally disagree and
resent both the content and the way you express yourself in the first part. First of all I have nothing to clarify and much less to apologise!!.

That is not a cross in the Christian sense of the word it is the internationally recognized symbol of peace which first appeared during the anti war rallies in the early sixties in the USA .

But even if it was a conventional cross which it was not, so what.  [me: so what he says]

It happens that in this country Jews are defined by birth and it may so happen that a someone who is recognized as a Jew by the state in the context of the law of return is not a practicing Jew by religion and if so he or she are entitled to wear whatever symbols they want .

But that is beside the point because what you write is in bad taste and I would call it antisemitism in reverse. What would you say if an Irish newspaper for example objected to someone emigrating to Ireland because he or she wears a Star of David because Ireland is a catholic country.
I would resent it would you not?.
I would call it antisemitism would you not?
I hope this has clarified matters
Sincerely yours

___________________________________

Non-Jews DO NOT MAKE ALIYA. They come to work, or are on vacation, or visit on a particular VISA category.

Thank you Juan de la Roca [roca@netvision.net.il] for your reply. 

Firstly, an editorial grammatical correction: one emigrates FROM a country, and one immigrates TO a country.

I wish to reiterate that I believe the Cover of Aliya Post is distasteful and repugnant to Jews.  This so-called International Cross of Peace hung around the neck of Christians for thousands of years (need I say Crusades) as they persecuted, murdered, created pogroms, and marched the Jews into Gas Chambers in World War II. And even today the UN and UNSC and the anti-semites of Europe are still not letting the Jews live their lives. Such an emblem of peace should not be gracing the cover of a Jewish Publication in the State of Israel, a country of the Nation of Jews.

THE COVER OF YOUR PUBLICATION IS IN BAD TASTE AND THE PHOTOGRAPH SEEMINGLY DEPICTS A CHRISTIAN MAKING ALIYA.

You are misguided and distorting what the State of Israel is. While I agree that everyone has the right to choose what they believe in, the juxtaposition of (what appears to be) a non-Jew making Aliya with the rai·son d’ê·tre of the State of Israel is a contradiction and false assumption:

"Eretz Israel [the Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books [the Bible].” (The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 14th May 1948).

The Jewish people have always constituted a nation, a people and a civilization, even throughout prolonged separation from their land. Millennia before the emergence of the ‘Westphalian system’, the Jewish people had established an independent polity in the Land of Israel. Both historically and from the perspective of modern Zionism, Jewish identity has been forged by a sense of peoplehood linked by a shared destiny, a land, a religion, a culture and a language.

The term "Jewish state" refers primarily to nationality. Since their emergence in antiquity, the Jewish people have constituted a nation, a people, and a civilization, anchored in basic aspects of their identity, such as Judaism and the Hebrew language. Israel is to the Jewish people what France is to the French people, Ireland is to the Irish and Japan is to the Japanese.  As stated by the Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Liberman, The Meaning of Israel as the State of the Jewish People.

With this statement of yours: "What would you say if an Irish newspaper for example objected to someone emigrating to Ireland because he or she wears a Star of David because Ireland is a catholic country.”

This analogy is wrong and misguided. Israel is a JEWISH STATE and ALIYA pertains to JEWS not to non-Jews. The Non-Jews that live in Israel are under the category of “Ger Toshav” or “Bnei Noach” according to Jewish Halacha (see below for definitions).

That is why I object to that picture on the cover of a publication that purports to support ALIYA – a picture of a Cross on the neck of an (supposedly Jewish) Immigrant to the Jewish State.

Sincerely.
_____________________________
Ger Toshav: Wikipedia
Bnei Noach: Wikipedia

cc: Sofa Landver, MK Minister of Immigration and Absorption; Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief, Jerusalem Post; Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Executive Director, Founder, Nefesh B'Nefesh;