Aliya (immigration to Israel) has dropped significantly this year. But even with only 7,600 new immigrants arriving in the country during the first five months of this year, controversy still rages over the kind of people Israel encourages to move here.
Veteran Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) allege that there are many anti-Semites among the non-Jews arriving here over the past ten years.
They point to an escalation of anti-Semitic acts perpetrated recently by immigrants from the FSU– verbal slurs; daubing of swastikas and Nazi slogans; distribution of anti-Semitic literature; creation of a neo-Nazi website and desecration of Jewish cemeteries.
The 2002 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics notes that non-Jews constitute about 25 per cent of the country’s population, 2% more than in the study for 2001. According to recent data from the Center for Issues of Assimilation of Bar Ilan University, non-Jews constitute 28%. What these statistics do not reveal, according to The Support Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism, is that the younger the population, the higher the proportion of non-Jews. The Center claims that one of every two newborns in Israel are not Jewish. Arabs, non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and foreign workers make up these numbers according to center director, Zalman Gilichenski.
Gilichenski, an observant Jew who emigrated from Kishinev, Moldova 15 years ago, is among those calling for amending Israel’s Law of Return that allows anyone with one Jewish grandparent to immigrate to the Jewish state. Other Jews from the FSU express their concern about the immigration of thousands of their non-Jewish former countrymen to Israel. Former refusenik Yigal Yehudi, who immigrated in 1979 voices the view of many Russian Jews from earlier immigrations: “We must stop using the Law of Return to destroy the Jewish character of the state,” he says.
The Law of Return, passed by the Knesset in 1950, states the principle that “every Jew has the right to immigrate to the country.” It was last amended in 1970 when the clause incorporating the right of non-Jewish spouses, children and grandchildren of Jews was approved.
More than one million people from the FSU have immigrated since then—one survey of recent immigrants from the FSU found that 70% did not qualify as “Jewish” according to religious law. Sources from several former Soviet republics report that most halachic Jews emigrated long ago. The Jewish Agency, they charge, is running after those with little or no ties to the Jewish community in order to justify their existence.
Longtime Jewish activist, Meylakh Sheykhet reached by phone in Lviv, Ukraine, says the Agency often turns a blind eye to applicants who turn in false birth certificates claiming Jewish ancestry. Sheykhet also decries the fact that there are no tests for potential Israeli immigrants.
A former Jewish Agency employee who worked in Taganrog for six years, Alexander Shaikhet (no relation to Meylakh) elaborates on Agency methods of recruiting potential immigrants. Advertisements in journals distributed by the Agency read: “Is at least one of your grandmothers or grandfathers from either the father’s or the mother’s side registered as a Jew? If so, you have the right to repatriation to Israel according to the amendment to the Law of Return.” Posters for youth programs in Israel use the same language, Shaikhet notes. More than 80% of those involved in Agency programs do qualify according to this criteria, Shaikhet points out, but he emphasizes that it is well-known that people are looking to emigrate from the FSU for economic, not identity reasons.
Former Minister of Absorption, Yuli Edelstein, told a Knesset hearing last year that the Jewish Agency was being “overzealous” in its outreach.
Jewish Agency spokesman Yehuda Weinreb acknowledges that “in recent years larger percentages of immigrants are not halachic,” but overall, three quarters of [the one million] immigrants from the FSU are Jews according to halacha.”
Additionally, Weinreb states, some 96% of FSU immigrants “see themselves as part of the Jewish people.” Does the Agency go out of its way in the FSU to try to attract those with little or no connection to Judaism? “There’s a 50% intermarriage rate in Western countries too and we promote aliya in every corner of the United States and France,” Weinreb says, “and we do go out of our way to find olim.”
Weinreb cites the “bad demographic situation” in Israel where Jews “are becoming outnumbered by Arabs,” to justify Agency efforts to attract newcomers. He notes that there are thousands of immigrants from the FSU serving in the IDF.
The Agency spokesman calls the manifestations of Russian anti-Semitism in Israel a “very fringe phenomena.”
The Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) concurs. “We believe these acts are perpetrated by a small group of disaffected Russian youth who have issues concerning their [religious] status,” says ADL Jerusalem spokeswoman Laura Kam Issacharoff.
The ADL has no plans to investigate the issue of Russian anti-Semitism in Israel because of its marginal nature and because they believe that Israeli law-enforcement agencies are dealing with the problem.
That doesn’t assuage Meylakh Sheykhet, working amongst the remaining Jews of Lviv, who sees non-Jews being permitted entry to Israel “who are educated in anti-Jewish stereotypes by the Church and neo-Nazi and Soviet style propaganda.”
Residents of Jerusalem’s Armon HaNatsiv neighborhood who found swastikas and pictures of a big-nosed Jew, along with (illiterate) inscriptions like “Heil Hitler” and “Dead Jew” scrawled on buildings last April did turn to law enforcement officials. Investigations indicated that a group of Russian-speaking youth already known to authorities for their aggressive behavior had carried out the acts.