| During its early years, Israel had to absorb a major influx of immigrants, including several hundred thousand nearly destitute Holocaust survivors and a large influx of Sephardic Jews from Arab states, who had felt increasingly insecure in their home countries following the Arab defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. As a result, on this day the Knesset (parliament) passed the Law of Return, granting Jews the freedom to immigrate to Israel and immediate citizenship. This law, however, proved ... |