Diminishing the Jewish Population

     In its 2002 report, Israel’s Central Board of Statistics reported that non-Jews constitute about 25% 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%. Unfortunately, the two aforementioned honorable institutions do not say anything about the trend in the changing demographic composition of Israel. The fact is, however: the younger the age-group of the population, the higher percentage of non-Jews. One in two of newborns in Israel is not Jewish. This statistic, which has been seen in the Israeli press, includes children of the country’s Arab citizens, non-Jewish immigrants, and foreign workers, many of whom end up settling in Israel. In the coming years the Jewish majority will still be preserved owing only to the elderly and in part to the middle-aged. After that, Jews will become a minority, diminishing with each coming year. The policy of importing many thousands of non-Jews in the semblance of repatriation vastly accelerates the process. No more than one-fourth of the repatriates from the CIS in the period from 2000 to 2002 were Jewish.

     The  “Dmir- Absorption Assistance” movement has consistently opposed this policy and has created the Information and Support Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism. According to the Center’s activists, it is the haphazard import of these people that has resulted in the wave of anti-Semitic activities that has been spreading in Israeli cities.

     The actions of the Jewish Agency have resulted to a great extent in a variety of dreadful consequences. These include the aggressive medleys of Russian-speaking juveniles that adorn themselves with Nazi symbols; the desecration of Jewish tombs in the State of Israel. Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic literature is imported freely and distributed in the thousands. Some time ago, the “Dmir” movement organized a protest picket outside the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem. The movement’s activists and new participants, who had learnt about the planned protest from an announcement on the Internet, joined together in this demonstration. One among those present turned to me saying, “I completely support your claims against the Jewish Agency. I am fully aware of the Jewish Agency’s arbitrariness because I worked for six years at the Jewish Agency’s branch in Taganrog.” We got acquainted. The former Jewish Agency worker’s name was Joseph (Alexander) Shaikhet. A few days later, I met Joseph to talk with him.

     In front of us is an advertisement from the “Horizons” journal from September 10th, 1998, which is distributed by the Jewish agency in the CIS. The ad states: “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.”

 Gilichenski:   “Some time ago the Jewish Agency’s leadership answered a question by stating that such an ad was published by mistake and would be discontinued in the future. However, our correspondents reported many times that the Jewish Agency’s officials continue this practice. What can you say about this?”

 Shaikhet:    “You know, above my desk at the Jewish Agency’s Taganrog branch there was a big advertisement poster for the Agency’s youth programs Naale, Sela, Halom, and Kibbutz Ulpan. The poster also included a remark: ‘anybody whose grandmother or grandfather were Jewish is entitled to repatriation.’ Incidentally, 80 percent of the people participating in these programs are Jews according to their grandmother or grandfather. Abandoning the advertisements for point 4/a of the Law of Return  (the so-called point about the grandchildren- Z.G) is tantamount to the bankruptcy of the Jewish Agency’s activities on the territory of the CIS. Understandably, you can see such advertisements in all kinds of Jewish Agency printed publications in CIS territories”.

 G.:        “You have mentioned the percentage of grandchildren. Do you have overall statistics for the time of your work?”

 S.:        “Of course I do. During the time of my work from 1994 to 2000, about 600 people emigrated from Taganrog to Israel. Of those, 108 people had been registered as Jews, 132 people had no Jewish kinship at all. They were husbands or wives of people to whom the Law of Return applied, and their children from other marriages. All others were relatives of Jewish children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And if we look at the marriage statistics, of the 134 married couples that had emigrated to Israel in that period, only in eleven couples were both partners Jewish. Of these 22 persons, nobody was younger than 60.”

G.:        “What does the statement ‘registered as Jews’ mean? In mixed marriages the children can also be registered as Jews?”

 S.:        “As a matter of fact, ‘registered as Jews’ signifies that both the person’s mother and father are Jews. In my six years’ practice there was only one daredevil who registered as a Jew, having had another alternative.”        

 G.:        “Some officials and politicians maintain that non-Jews who have come to Israel to live here permanently, become Jews automatically by virtue of  ‘having voted with their feet.’”

 S.:        “This claim is speculative from beginning to end. It is no secret for anybody that in recent years the repatriation from the CIS has been driven primarily by economic considerations. But this is not the most dreadful thing as yet. What is worse is that the Jewish Agency itself, in its work, is guided purely by economic considerations. The role of the Jewish Agency is reduced to two actions, filling out questionnaires and putting the person on a plane. From the start of my involvement there, I could not accept such a state of affairs. I believed that before we send somebody to live permanently in the Jewish land, he or she must be given at least a minimal background about Judaism. After returning to Israel a year ago, I contacted the repatriates who had come through our Jewish Agency’s branch. Half of them wanted to go back to Russia. The other half was dreaming of Canada, and some had already gone there. Only a few said they feel good here. When I had held the position of a repatriation coordinator, I tried to acquaint the would-be repatriates with Jewish history and tradition as far as I could. I used to read to them Shalom Alechem, historical literature, and fiction. Unfortunately, most of my efforts got no response. It was no less frustrating that my colleagues at work considered my activities quixotism and laughed at me. Here I must emphasize that the Jewish Agency employees in Russia are divided into two categories: Israelis who hold the leadership positions, and employees from among the local inhabitants. The ratio of the first to the second is 1 to 10. Sometimes, Jewish consciousness is awakened among the Israelis. Then, one can hear from them expressions like: ‘What are we doing here? Who are we bringing?’ Unfortunately, these flashes pass quickly. As far as the Russian Jewish Agency workers are concerned, as a rule, they are people without any sentiments whatsoever. They could work with the same success in any other office job, and the fact that they happened upon a job in the Jewish Agency is purely incidental.”

 G.:        “On August 5th, 2002, a ship named ‘Jasmine,’ with 380 ‘repatriates’ from the CIS arrived at the port of Haifa. It was a record day in the number of new arrivals for the whole of 2002. According to reports from the Israeli press, however, only about ten percent of those people were Jewish. This voyage was organized and subsidized by the Christian organization ‘Iben Ezer.’ This organization was credited with bringing about 90,000 repatriates to Israel from Russia since ’91. Joseph, did you happen to come across similar organizations?”

 S.:        “Really, in recent years, Christian organizations have started to duplicate the activities of the Jewish Agency. If the Jewish Agency operates by at least glimpsing at the Law of Return, then these organizations heed no limitations whatsoever. For some reason, they have set themselves the aim of bringing as many people to Israel as possible. Perhaps this is connected with their understanding of the biblical prophecies. They have also adopted Hebrew names like ‘Iben Ezer,’ ‘Yad Ezra,’ one organization is even named after Jabotinsky. At a certain stage in their work the Jewish Agency leadership decided to establish contacts with these organizations. I took part in those meetings. After some time, it became clear from their demonstrated results that they can indeed compete with the Jewish Agency, and the relationship became strained. The emissaries of these organizations travel to towns and to the countryside and often reach the most remote places. There they search for people who they think can make a claim to being Jewish – for instance, whose names end in ‘-ski’ or ‘-ich.’ Then they persuade those individuals to apply for permanent residence in Israel. They help the consenting people with the necessary arrangements and bring them to the Israeli consulate. Of course, most of them are sifted out there for lack of Jewish kinship, but enough of them succeed in meeting the criteria.”

    P., a Ministry of the Interior official who wanted to remain anonymous, said, “By international consensus, students are the most valuable possession of a country. Of course, this population group takes the first place in the list of priorities for Israeli consulate groups and for the Office of Contacts in the CIS. These organizations are responsible there for examining their Jewish nationality and for issuing immigration permits. However, the right to repatriation is often established on the basis of very doubtful documents that we cannot accept here at the Ministry of the Interior, as much as we want to. The blame for the plight and disappointment of these youngsters belongs to those irresponsible people that had persuaded them to emigrate to Israel.”

    Recently the Israeli leadership establishment has found it increasingly difficult to cover up this faulty immigration policy. “In front of me is the text of the Law of Return,” said Yuli Edelstein, ex-Deputy Minister of Absorption, to the Jewish Agency’s Repatriation Department Chief in the November 2002 Politics TV broadcast. “However, it does not say in any section that you, as Jewish Agency representatives abroad, must actively search for persons entitled to repatriation.”

    Within the last decade, the Jewish Agency has become an extremely powerful organization with a huge staff and colossal resources. The Jewish Agency’s bigwigs do not want to resign the power that they are wielding. Their sources conceal the real ratio of non-Jews among the people that arrive for permanent residence in Israel. 

    To this end, they are resorting to dishonest statistics (without any age-related subdivisions or other factors). By means of an information smokescreen they try to cover up the fact that the Jewish Agency has been converted to a transportation agency for non-Jewish immigrants.

Zalman Gilichenski – project manager

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