Religious birthright logic embedded in language structures yields formally unequal citizenship.

Evidence

As Masalha (1992) argued, the concept of “transfer” itself – which is used in Zionist jargon as a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and which historically occupied Zionist thinking pre-1948, when the destiny of the Palestinian population in the future Jewish state was discussed – is embedded in the same idea that Palestine belongs exclusively to the Jewish people on a biblical basis as their birthright. This is why, in traditional Zionist discourse, Palestinians (the indigenous people) are considered to be strangers (or even invaders and infiltrators), and Jews (the recently arrived immigrants) are considered natives of Palestine – whatever their geographic origin. Immigration laws are based on the same biblical birthright conception (God’s deed); therefore, Jewish immigrants “ascend” (in Hebrew oleh) to the country of God’s promise, while those who emigrate descend from it (yored). For this reason, a Jewish immigrant is called an oleh. This term, however, is only applicable to an immigrant who is a Jew. These terms themselves are submerged with the deepest religious convictions. The citizenship of Arab and Jew itself is founded on God’s promise, and thus citizenship has two different levels, one (more privileged) for a Jew and one (less privileged) for an Arab (A. Bishara 2017). — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 499

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete mechanism for how sacralized framing produces codified hierarchy — parallels the colonial legal category-making read in Along the Archival Grain and A Different Shade of Colonialism (law creating plunderable/unequal classes). — connects to: Formal citizenship (legal membership) differs from substantive citizenship (actual rights enjoyed) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 812
• QUESTION: Is the bahasa/terminology itself doing causal work, or only expressing prior policy intent? The oleh/yored/stranger-native inversion is a strong candidate example of linguistic framing sacralizing a boundary.