This article analyses the unprecedented decision taken by the Israeli state in 2005 to legalize the status of non-Jewish undocumented migrants’ children. In explaining how the plight of culturally assimilated non-Jewish children succeeded in penetrating the hermetic ethno-religious definition of citizenship in Israel, the article focuses on the subtle yet critical influence of kinship on modern state-making and the affective fashioning of national belonging. By insisting on treating culturally assimilated non-Jewish children as Others, Israel increasingly ran the risk of unveiling the feeble construction of the Jewish nation in terms of kinship as ‘one big family’. The Israeli media increasingly began to question the refusal of the state to recognize children who were evidently ‘Israelis in every way’. Such a development, as some Israeli politicians undoubtedly realized, could have potentially been more detrimental to the mythological foundations of the Jewish state than the ‘adoption’ of a few hundred non-Jewish children.

本文分析了以色列政府在2005年做出的前所未有的决定，以使无犹太籍无证件移民的子女的身份合法化。在解释在文化上被同化的非犹太儿童的困境如何成功地渗透了以色列公民身份的封闭式种族宗教定义时，文章着重探讨了亲属关系对现代国家建立和民族归属的情感塑造的微妙而关键的影响。通过坚持将在文化上被同化的非犹太儿童当作其他人对待，以色列越来越冒着揭露犹太民族建树微不足道的风险，将其视为“一个大家庭”。以色列媒体越来越开始质疑国家拒绝承认显然是“以色列人”的儿童。这样的发展，