We at VDARE.com have long admired the firmness of purpose demonstrated by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in protecting his country’s character.

Apparently we are about to see another demonstration. Mondoweiss reports:

Israel preparing to deport star of Oscar-winning doc 'Strangers No More’ by Mya Guarnieri February 28, 2011

“Strangers No More“ is a multi-cultural feel-good propaganda dollop about a school in Israel trying to educate children from 48 different countries whose parents are immigrants, legal and illegal, or refugees. Last weekend it won the Oscar for short documentary.

As I noted in Netanyahu for President! (2) under Israeli law, even for non-Jewish legal immigrants

not only is there no birthright citizenship, their children do not have an automatic right to stay. No Anchor Babies for Israel!

Consequently, says Mondoweiss

...on Sunday, the very day that the honor was awarded, South Tel Aviv’s kindergartens were half-empty. Why? According to the Israeli news site Walla, parents kept their children home from school because they were so frightened of the immigration police.

The New York Times, confirming that

Israel’s Interior Ministry said Monday that the government’s preparations for dealing with the children of illegal residents were in their final stages and that the plan would be carried out in the coming weeks.

(Migrants in Israel Face Uncertainty, Despite Oscar by Isabel Kershner February 28th, 2011)

has interesting news about the producers of this film, which it says

celebrates the school’s atmosphere of diversity and tolerance as it tries to integrate the children into Israeli life...

The directors of the documentary, Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon, became aware of the deportation issue during filming but decided not to focus on it.

"We chose to create a film that was not political," Ms. Goodman wrote in an email message en route from Los Angeles to New York. "Bialik is a place of peace and introducing the issue of deportation in a broad way would have been inappropriate."

Mr. Simon added, "Because our film would take over a year to produce and will not be broadcast in the United States until later this year we thought that including an issue that could be resolved or change or evolve could hurt the long time viewership potential of the film."

Of course Goodman is being absurd: the subject is ultra-political. At least Simon is being honest: they suppressed this inconvenient fact because it might hurt revenues.

While it is impossible not to be amused to find that the film was screened at the Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance Film Festival last year, the subject is not funny. VDARE.com salutes the Israelis for doing what is needed to preserve their country.

Now can America be allowed to do the same?