the Israeli governments of Shamir and Rabin let in whomever without checking whether those people were really Jews or just bought a fake conversion certificate or fake Russian passport that said they were Jews.

Are you insane? Seriously? I wouldn't wish that on my worse enemy. Multiculturalism doesn't work, Read the paper, talk to your neighbours. The only ones that like it are the immigrants and the politicians that gather their votes. Multiculturalism in Canada will be gone within 10 years. I bet a dollar to a nickel. It will be worse than the japanese roundup in ww2.

Maybe because they happened to have fallen in love???

I can't speak for Canada, but there is something odd about the US. First generation immigrants might want to hang onto their old culture, but their kids don't. They want to be Americans. This place grows on you, and you don't even notice it. Of course, some of us wanted to be Americans before we ever got here, and it sure made life a lot easier and a lot more fun.

Imagine if an American paper was printing articles on the dangers of "mixed" marriages.

I see one big problem with mixed marriages, and that is the fact that one is only a Jew, if one's mother was Jewish. Why, when "only" the father is Jewish, would anyone want to raise a child in a religion that doesn't even "recognize" that child? I don't know whether or not there are statistics along those lines, but I'd venture to guess that in most of mixed marriages, where the mother is Jewish, the children are brought up Jewish and where the father is Jewish they're brought up in the mother's religion. I think, Judaism is losing out on a lot of good people, due to that situation. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to accept the offspring of either Jewish parent as Jewish and let them convert to something else, if they were so inclined later on or had the nerve??? That may sound odd, but spiritually speaking and the way I look at it, it takes a lot more chutzpah to go from Jewish to something else than from something else to Jewish. You can't go wrong with "Jewish," whereas, in my humble opinion, most everything else is kind of iffy.

My father is the jewish one, and even though he is rather non-religious he is a staunch supporter of the jewish people and judaism. Thus we have been raised to love jews and israel. My mother converted in her later life being mostly agnostic/atheists before, but we always had judaism there in the background. It's the only religious practice we've had in our house and the only one that makes any sense to me, so why won't some people recognize me as such? The stance on mixed marriages needs to be changed!

it is in how you phrase the question, 4 couples is four marriages but if two of them are not jewish and married to each other, then in theory two people out of the four couples are in a potential "Mixed marriage" making the statistic seem like 50%

I would be interested in finding out the statistical trends on this particular kind of mixed marriage.

Israel is full with goyim and the Jewish agency keep bringing them. Over half of all immigrants were non Jews when I was in Ulpan. Its the lefts way of keeping themselves from having a relegious country. Thats why they gave arabs the right to vote here. When I was in the IDF I saw Russian drwa swarstikas on my base. We must kick them out now. Goys out - Jews in. The land of Israel is only for the Jews.

You are insane. Such a status quo (monoculturalism) is against the nature. Divisions, rules...its all artificial. Dont you get it? I bet you have never heard about Locke or Rousseau. Go and educate yourself!

Why this is possible Jasmin? Because of the great "Law of Return", which states that when you have a Jewish grandparent, Jewish father or when you are married to a Jew, you can emigrate to Israel under that law. This law should DEFINITELY be adjusted!! This way thousands of non-Jews come to Israel. Marry Arabs Jackson Thomas?? This is against Jewish law, so therefore, this should not be done. And second of all, there's the wellknown problem of Israeli Jewish women whom convert to Islam in order to marry palestinians but in 90% those marriages turn out in abusement, rape and wanting to flee. Read these kind of stories please; http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=72281

Marrying an Arab is NOT against Jewish law, John. Arabs can convert to Judaism just as easily as any ethnicity. I will agree, though, that #28's intermarriage pipedream is naive at best. The huge disparity between the law of return and the marriage laws for "Jews" is depressing as well. The gov't foolishly expects the sorta-Jews to embrace halakha and integrate as orthodox, but that's very rarely the case. This is the reason Israel won't be true Jewish state for very long. Zionism has failed.

Russian brought a bit culture in your counttry, they defence you and others "things" like you being in army or in war. Shmok.

Are Jews racist? Why would Jews prefer Caucasians over Asians or Africans? One would think Jews would be more tolerant considering their history and the fact that the ones who persecuted them were Caucasian (Germans).

This report has already said its not very accurate 'as there is no organized marriage registration outside the Rabbinate it is difficult to estimate the number of these mixed couples.' so since there is not civil marriage and jew to non-jew is prohibited in israel the vast majority of intermarriage happens abroad and are not rabbinate registered (only interior ministry) so this survey doesn't tell us anything since the group surveyed are not the group the article is talking about. Also in the case of civil divorce ourside of israel there are no statistics as there is not need to divorce through the rabbinute since you can't register with them. and yes it does violate human rights for force people out of their own country to marry the person they love without their friends and family.

the interior ministry takes a long time to register marriages performed outside of Israel, in total it took over 1 year for the state of Israel to recognise my marriage, which means their stats are also way out of date. but on the bright side we did get to be insulted by being told our marital status was 'in dispute'; these would give better figures about external marriage as they only slow recognising intermarried couples.

The problem is Israel´s immigrant policies. The Law of Return confers an automatic right to citizenship on anyone who has converted to judaism, or who has ONE jewish grandparent. That explains why many of the russians in Israel, for example, are quite different from other jews.

I think it´s kind of ironic that actually the palestinians are far more closely related to israelites, than some of the Eastern European jews are. Israel needs to change it´s immigration policies.