Chief Rabbi Lau: Israel should ‘open the door’ to Ukrainian refugees with ‘no safe harbor’

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau says Israel should accept refugees from Ukraine “that don’t find another country” to stay in amid the Russian invasion.

“Until they can return to their homes,” he tells Kan public radio, “so there won’t be a situation in which a person escapes from the fire, the hostility and has nowhere to go, no safe harbor.”

Lau says granting residency or citizenship to Ukrainians who fled the war “is something else entirely… but first of all, open the door.”

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman urges Israel to accept more refugees from Ukraine who aren’t eligible to immigrate, joining several other ministers who have called for more people fleeing the fighting to be allowed into the country.

“As long as the fighting is going on, [Israel] needs to absorb all those who fled and whose lives are in danger,” he writes on Twitter.

Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman speaks at a conference of the Israeli newspaper “Makor Rishon” at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, February 21, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)