"It is appropriate that this bill be removed immediately from the agenda of both Parliament and the Portuguese Nation," says Attorney Itay Mor who represents Israelis applying for Portuguese citizenship, following a recent bill which passed in the parliament in Lisbon, which states that the descendants of victims of the Spanish expulsion of Jews who are seeking to obtain citizenship will now have to prove a "contemporary relationship with Portugal."
In his letter to MP Constanza de Souza, who initiated the amendment to the 2013 bill which allowed descendants of Spanish expulsion of Jews around 500 years ago to apply for Portuguese citizenship, Mor points out that the bill's original intention was to redress the historical injustice of expulsion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula and allow their descendants to gain Portuguese citizenship, reconnect with their historic roots and rejoin the Portuguese nation.
According to Mor, on April 28, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when Western parliaments' main concerns were for the health and economy of their residents - a bill was placed on the table of the Portuguese parliament which sought to change the bill entirely, requiring that one of the new pre-conditions for obtaining citizenship would be a two-year period of residence in Portugal.
However, Mor said, following pressure from many directions, the amendment to the 2013 bill was changed again. This time, instead of the residential requirement, applicants for citizenship would now have to demonstrate "a contemporary relationship with Portugal."
"The decision to submit a bill that would again prevent Jews from exercising their legal right, reminds us of dark days and regimes crueler than even that of the Inquisition," the letter added.
"As a legal counsel who represents many Jewish descendants of the expulsion, in Israel and abroad, I offer my professional and personal assistance to promote a dialogue that will ensure an appropriate and respectful solution to this situation, one that would be right for both Portugal and its lost Jews," he concluded in his appeal to the MP.Translated by Idan Zonshine.