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How about exhibit A:
I will grant you that it is a mixture of religious and ethnic discrimination (as you can lose your right if you or your grandparent converted to another religion), but this is not "disparate outcome racism" that the wokes like to whine about, but straightforward racial discrimination for the purpose of maintaining an ethnostate.
As a thought experiment, suppose that Iceland guaranteed white people from South Africa a path to become citizens, but not black people. Not through some proxy, but directly. You have two people both of whom apply to a visa, neither has been in Iceland or is likely to have ancestors who were in Iceland within 50 generations, and Iceland decides that it prefers one of them because if his ethnicity, because they want to maintain the "white race" in Iceland.
This Iceland would be about as central of an example of racist as you can be reasonably be. A government has a skin color palette or a DNA origin threshold and explicitly makes policy decisions about individuals based on that, without even the fig leaf of wanting to undo the effects of earlier unequal treatment of ethnicities it did earlier. Whether it decides who goes on a plane to Reykjavík or on a train to Auschwitz or on a overfilled slave ship towards Florida makes a big difference in magnitude but not in direction.
And to be honest, I do not see really much in the way of difference between the fictional Iceland policy and the real Israeli policy. You can make a case if you want that the Law of Return is actually one of these rare cases where racism is good, as apologists of affirmative action make for their cases. But any definition of racism which does not include treating two foreigners different purely because of their ethnic background will struggle to admit any cases of racism, unless you want to go straight for a racially discriminating definition of racism: "racism is racial discrimination done by gentile whites", for example.
More than a dozen European countries do have ancestry-based visa programmes. So does Japan, Korea, India, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Although expecting a skin colour palette is a weirdly American way of looking at things. Poles are not Germans just because they both have pale skin.
It's not as if Israel is unique in that regard. Israel's programme is obviously a bit different because the Jewish diaspora is 2,000 years old, but fundamentally it accepts people because of their ancestry, just like programmes in many other countries.
If Iceland did have such a programme, it obviously wouldn't be open to Euro-South Africans, because they are mostly Dutch and English rather than Icelandic.
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Well you are completely free to define "racism" any way you like for purposes of discussion; I am requesting a clear, consistent definition.
I take it that in your view, any country which engages in citizenship discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion is "racist" in your view?
I am asking this question because many countries (Ireland, Japan, Poland, Liberia, etc.) engage in this sort of discrimination and yet it's pretty unusual for me to witness accusations of racism against these countries. Which makes me suspect that "racism" is not the real objection to Israeli policy.
That being said, if you will agree that numerous countries in Europe, Asia, etc.. are "racist" by your definition, I will certainly concede that Israel is too.
By the way, if a country discriminates in the same way in terms of permitting residency, work authorization, etc. can we agree that this is also racist by your definition?
Edit: Actually looking over your post, I see that I hardly need to ask that question.
As an example, from what I understand, under Chinese law, an ethnic Chinese person whose family has lived in Manila, Mexico City, or San Francisco for generations would have a far easier time obtaining residency and a work permit in China than a non-Chinese. So in other words, China is apparently treating foreigners differently purely because of their ethnic background.
So the answer would seem to be "yes." Under your definition, China is racist; Japan is racist; Liberia is racist; etc.
Agreed?
Fine by me.
I mean, I could nitpick and claim that considering previous citizenship of your parents irrespective of their particular ethnicity is less bad than simply deciding that you generally prefer your main ethnicity even if there is no particular link to your country in an applicants ancestry. I would certainly consider China more racist if their law was peculiar to Han Chinese rather than applying equally to Zhuang. Hoping that it would also apply to Uyghur would be beyond optimistic.
Another difference is how impactful the various return laws are. Poland or Ireland are traditionally seen as countries from which people emigrated. Not a lot of Americans either with or without Polish ancestry want to emigrate to Poland. By contrast, Israel has been heavily dependent on immigration since their law of return was passed. To a good approximation, everyone there is either a recent immigrant or an Arab (or possibly both).
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