Did Israel ever consider offering Romani people birthright citizenship?

by the_hip_e

I am Israeli, so I know Israel is designated as a Jewish state but I was wondering if there was ever a consideration to include Romani people as citizens due to the shared experiences in the holocaust?

gingeryid

While it's very difficult to prove a negative--even if I were to read all archival materials from the Israeli government, I have no way of proving no politicians discussed this informally at some point--the context of the Israeli governmental policy and formation points strongly towards "no".

The majority of Israeli governmental officials were not Holocaust survivors, they had been in Palestine for decades before the war, and generally arose to political prominence through various pre-state organizations. They did not have any "shared experience" with Romani people. And while they may have regarded the Holocaust as an illustration of why there ought to be a Jewish state, and a way to build international political support, they did not see it as a motivating factor itself--they had been involved in the Zionist project for decades before the war already.

Further, the experience of the Holocaust itself was not so widely seen as something important to keep in mind by early Israelis. A significant part of the Israeli world saw them as having not having sufficient fought back against the Nazis, which is part of a broader (incorrect) mythology on what the Holocaust victims ought to have done. So for the Israelis directing political policy in the early state, the fact that the Romani had similarly experienced genocide without sufficiently dramatic resistance might even have counted against them.