Applicants for German citizenship will be required to explicitly affirm Israel’s right to exist under a new citizenship law which came into effect on Tuesday.
The new law shortened the number of years that a person must have lived in Germany in order to obtain a passport, from eight to five years. It will also allow first-generation migrants to be dual citizens.
As part of the shake-up, new questions were added to the country’s citizenship test, including about Judaism and Israel’s right to exist.
Me? I’m not so anarchist that I personally have a problem with pledging allegiance to a flag or whatevs, just anarchist enough that I find it somewhat odd when people assume that everyone is part of “you” and “us” groups of that kind.
I guess it’s just that having to acknowledge the sovereign powers of some country other than the one you’re applying for citizenship in is unusual enough to make this sort of weird power to define our views of the world that the modern state has achieved stand out a little more than usual.