The Israeli High Court of Justice has decided in favor of an appellant who sought the naturalization of his children born before his conversion to Judaism, despite his concealment of their births from authorities for several years.
On Sunday, the justices ruled on Eliezer Clement’s appeal against a 2019 decision by the Beersheba District Court. Clement, a member of the Hebrew Israelites Community of Dimona, had initially been denied the naturalization of seven of his 11 children by the lower court.
Clement’s petition was previously rejected because these seven children were born in the United States before his 2005 conversion to Judaism and his subsequent naturalization in Israel.
The Law of Return grants naturalization rights to Jews, their spouses, children, and grandchildren. Clement’s own naturalization in 2006 under this law also facilitated his wife’s naturalization. However, the status of his seven children born before 2006 remained problematic, especially since Clement and his wife had hidden the births of some of these children from the authorities for years.
Justice Ruth Ronnen, who, along with Justice Uzi Vogelman, ruled in favor of the appeal, stated that the Clements’ omission to report the home births of three of their children was not pertinent to the appeal. This point had been a factor in the lower court’s rejection of the naturalization application. Ronnen also challenged the notion that the timing of a parent’s conversion should affect their children’s eligibility under the Law of Return.
Clement and his wife originally entered Israel over two decades ago as tourists with four children, staying beyond their visa’s expiration. They subsequently had three more children in Israel without reporting their births, and five additional children whose births were reported to the authorities, although one has since passed away.
Before 2005, Eliezer Clement returned to the United States to convert to Judaism, after which he applied to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. During this process, he falsely claimed to be unmarried and without children, according to Haaretz.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Alex Stein argued that while the children could seek naturalization through other legal means, the Law of Return did not apply to them.
“The law is the law, even when it means we’re unable to bring the human story before us to a happy ending,” he wrote.
{Matzav.com Israel}
