Coming Soon: Israel’s Biometric ID Cards
Biometric identity cards — cards carrying a computer chip with biographical information like a photo, fingerprints, signature, and date of birth — were controversial from the moment they were first mentioned. Now Israel is finally ready to issue them, the local media reports.
We have known this was coming since the run up to the vote on the so-called biometric law, which passed in December. The Forward reported almost two years ago about concerns that were being voiced. But there’s one bizarre detail that has only just come to light.
The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported yesterday that the serial numbers on the new cards will begin at six million — an act of commemoration for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, who would have had the right to Israeli citizenship had they been alive for the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
This move is likely to spark a row, with some seeing it as an apt act of commemoration and others viewing it as a distasteful projection of Zionism onto Holocaust victims — many of whom were opposed to Zionism.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
