Israel's government on Monday was to consider the possibility to expand the parameters of the Law of Return, allowing Jews from all over the world to repatriate to Israel, in order to facilitate the arrival and absorption of Russian Jews facing a draft into the Russian military.
Under Israel's Law of Return, a person needs at least one Jewish grandparent to be entitled to immediate Israeli citizenship.
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman — who's Israel Beiteinu party representing Israelis from the former Soviet Union in local politics — is proposing to extend the availability to those who have a Jewish great grandparent.
Liberman stipulated that this could be a temporary measure. This comes on the heels of a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to call up 300,000 reservists, a major escalation of Russia's flagging invasion of Ukraine.
The prospect of conscription to a brutal war where Russia in recent weeks was dealt numerous setbacks sent hundreds of thousands to flee across Russia's borders to neighboring countries from the Baltics to Kazakhstan to Armenia.
Since Russia launched the invasion of its neighbor in February, over 24,000 Russian Jews arrived in Israel.
Many more arrived from war-ravaged Ukraine, though a proportion of the refugees have seen moved on to third countries.