Israel Matzav

Bringing more non-Jews to Israel

Insanity, said Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Recently, Israel has had neo-Nazis coming out of the woodwork, mainly among the Halachic non-Jews (non-Jews under Jewish law) who were brought here from the former Soviet Union to 'fill quotas' by the Jewish Agency in the late 80's and early 90's. What is Israel going to do about the problem? Bring more of them.

Hat Tip: Radical Ron

At first glance, the story of Natalja Scheinbaum seems a prime example of an immigrant's successful integration into German society. Scheinbaum was 36 when she moved from Ukraine to Germany in 1991. She learned German in record time, studied at university and found a well-paid job as a network administrator. Her son, Jewgenij, received his high school diploma and then obtained a university degree in computer science.

But Natalja Scheinbaum's own integration into the Jewish community was less successful. Already a victim of religious discrimination in the Soviet Union, Scheinbaum has felt for the past 16 years that Berlin's Jewish community has erected an invisible wall between itself and her. "It's sad and absurd," she says.

The problem lies in differing ideas of what it means to be Jewish. For traditional Jews, a person's mother has to be Jewish for that person to be a Jew, whereas the Soviet Union had a looser definition. Although Scheinbaum's old Soviet Union passport states that she is Jewish, the Jewish community in her new home town takes a different view. It does not consider her to be a real Jew because, although she has a Jewish father, she has no Jewish mother. She was therefore barred from becoming a member of the community -- a fate she shares with thousands of others.

This state of affairs is one reason why the Israeli government has now begun to focus its attention on Natalja Scheinbaum and the many others who have been turned away for similar reasons. Traveling to Germany soon will be two members of Nativ -- the Israeli liaison organization founded as an arm of Israeli intelligence in the early 1950s to maintain contact with Jews living in communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War. They know that more than half of the 220,000 Jews who have immigrated to Germany since 1991 now have virtually no contact whatsoever with the Jewish community. They know about the conflicts between Eastern European and Western European Jews, conflicts that have brought many local communities throughout Germany to the brink of schism. And they will discreetly point out to their target group that, by virtue of their Jewish ancestry, they have the right to move to Israel whenever they choose. Under Israel's Law of Return, having one Jewish grandparent is enough to qualify a person for the right to immigrate.

...

While Israel still received more than 60,000 Jewish immigrants in 2000, the number had dropped to 19,264 by 2006. Conversely, about 20,000 Jews will probably leave the country this year.

Given these figures, one group of people living in Germany seems especially attractive to Nativ: the younger Jewish immigrants. Those aged between 40 and 60 who arrived during the early 1990s often had difficulties establishing themselves on the upper levels of the labor market. Their qualifications as teachers, doctors and engineers were worth nothing in their new home. But they passed their level of education on to their children, who are now splendidly equipped for their careers: Many of them have high school diplomas, and most in that group are already studying at university. [Those children are in the same age-bracket as many of the neo-Nazis recently arrested in Israel. And they come from the same background - halachically non-Jewish Russians. CiJ]

Larissa Syssojewa from the World Congress of Russian Jewry (WCRJ) finds it "aggravating" that Jewish communities in Germany are not making more of an effort to woo this elite. She is particularly upset with the Central Council of Jews in Germany for sitting back "idly" and watching Berlin tighten the regulations on the immigration of Eastern European Jews in 2006. Now one of the preconditions for immigration to Germany is an invitation from a Jewish community in the country.

To Syssojewa, this is an unambiguous sign: "The German Jews don't want us," she says. "As many of us as possible should leave."

Germany is in fact crawling with Russian Jews. I spent a few days in Frankfurt on business in the late 90's, and nearly the entire morning minyan there was Russian Jews. If anything, 220,000 may be an underestimate. But bringing more Russians who are halachically non-Jewish to Israel is not the answer to our alleged demographic problems. As I noted above, the children of these Russians residing in Germany - the alleged targets for Netiv - are exactly the same demographic as the neo-Nazis recently arrested here. Recall where the neo-Nazis in Israel come from:

Surprisingly, they are more likely to be middle-class than poor, Gilichinski says. As a rule, they grew up in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel in their early adolescence, then joined the neo-Nazi groups at age 15-17. Those who immigrated as young kids and grew up in Israel are unlikely to drift into these sorts of activities, he adds. Most are in their late teens to early 20s.

The gangs in different cities here are not united, but they are all connected with neo-Nazi groups in Russia through the Russian Web sites. Together, they are the Israeli branch of the Russian ultranationalist and neo-Nazi movements. The most virulent of these Russian movements is Format 18, whose Web site is very popular with Israeli neo-Nazis.

The locals originate not only in Russia, but in various republics of the former Soviet Union. However, they are all ethnic Russians, and look down on the darker-skinned immigrants from the southern republics such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, just as they look down on Jews, blacks, Arabs and Asians.

Let's bring real Jews to Israel. Let's identify those Jews the same way they have been identified for generations and not the way Adolph Hitler YMS"H, the greatest anti-Semite of his time, identified them. Let's not let Hitler decide Israel's destiny!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:47 PM