RSS
Russian Jews Are Still Coming to Israel
Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov attend an annual meeting of the Defence Ministry Board in Moscow, Russia, December 21, 2022. Photo: Sputnik/Mikhail Kuravlev/Kremlin via REUTERS/File Photo
I was young when I first learned about the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. I knew that this number represented two thirds of the Jews of Europe. To make matters worse, I learned that more than three million were trapped behind the Iron Curtain, in the Soviet Union and its satellite neighbors.
Then, a miracle took place, and Soviet Jews were given exit visas. In response to pressure from within and without, by the year 2000, two million Jews had left the Former Soviet Union.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 1.3 million individuals immigrated to Israel between the founding of the state in 1948 and the year 2021 from the Former Soviet Union.
Amazingly, the Russians are still coming. More than 83,000 emigres from Russia have come to Israel since the start of the Ukraine-Russia war in early 2022, according to figures from the Aliyah and Integration Ministry. Moreover, according to a report published on the anniversary of October 7 by The Moscow Times, these immigrants feel that political tensions in Russia are personally more dangerous than the multi-front war Israel is currently fighting.
In fact, Jews from both Russia and Ukraine have been immigrating to Israel since the start of the war. Most are not Jewish according to strict Jewish religious law. They are immigrating in accordance with the Law of Return, which gives an individual with one Jewish grandparent the right to Israeli citizenship. However, citing Israeli data, Interfax, a Russian non-governmental news agency in Moscow, reported that in 2023, nearly 70% of the 45,000 immigrants who came to Israel were from Russia, while only 4.5 % were from Ukraine.
If that information is indeed accurate, what explains this difference? Both Ukraine and Russia still have Jewish notable Jewish populations. Moreover, indiscriminate Russian attacks have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. There is no Iron Dome in Ukraine. If anything, civilian life in Ukraine is much more harrowing than that experienced by Israelis.
A blog in The Times of Israel by Anna Abramzon, an artist based in Los Angeles, may be relevant to answer that question. Abramzon writes that while many American Jews are shocked by the antisemitism unleashed after the brutal Hamas pogrom on October 7, those who grew up in the Soviet Union are not.
She cites several recent examples of discrimination toward American Jews. These include the cancellation of an exhibit by a Jewish artist, the reluctance by university presidents to renounce antisemitism, the retraction by an American literary magazine of an essay by a left-wing Israeli writer, and whether Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was considered too Jewish to be a vice presidential running mate in the US election.
Abramzon writes, “Jews knew their limits in Soviet society. There was only so far a Jew could get professionally, educationally, or socially in the Soviet Union. Universities had quotas; travel visas abroad were impossible. You could be talented, hardworking, and even a loyal Communist, but first and foremost, you would always be a Jew.”
To Abramzon, it is this kind discrimination, and the impact it has on limiting the freedom of an individual to make life choices, that may now be experienced by American Jews. Life for Jews in Ukraine may not be a bed of roses (the Democracy Index rates Ukraine to be a hybrid regime, not a democracy), but, this is a far cry from the autocratic regime that rules Russia today.
Abramzon ends her blog stating, “There is a vast space between ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and Auschwitz, but there is no reason we have to settle for living in it.”
Is she suggesting that North American Jews make aliyah too?
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
The post Russian Jews Are Still Coming to Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.