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Anti-Semitism, right here at home%AM %23 %b %2003
author: Lily Galili in Ha'aretz
summary
Not long ago the first Israeli neo-Nazi Internet site was launched. It has text and pictures of "The White Israeli Union," some of them in Israel Defense Forces uniforms saluting with a raised arm. There is a section on "Who our enemies are,": the Jews, the Arabs, the immigrants from all Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union, the Moroccans, the foreign workers. In the material about the Arabs there is even a practical suggestion to enlist in the IDF in a combat unit, in order to get weapons and begin to shoot at them in every possible circumstance.
Anti-Semitism, right here at home
By Lily Galili
Not long ago the first Israeli neo-Nazi Internet site was launched. To put it more precisely, it is actually an Israeli site in the Russian language. Who says there are no original productions here?
To the list of oddities by which the world is now defined, a few local paradoxes can be added. It appears that the number of Russian Jews who will emigrate to Germany this year will be larger than the number who come to Israel; the law under which Jews from the former Soviet Union can immigrate to Germany is close to the restricted definition of "Jewish under Jewish law." The Israeli Law of Return, however, is in fact based on the Nuremberg Laws, in which the Germans expanded the definition of who is Jewish in accordance with their own needs.
Anti-Semitism has been swelling recently in Europe, and also in the Jewish state. Not long ago, the first Israeli neo-Nazi Internet site was launched. More precisely, it is an Israeli site in the Russian language. Who says there are no original productions here?
The site is well organized. It has text and pictures showing the activists of the organization, "The White Israeli Union," some of them in Israel Defense Forces uniforms on the background of army camps and saluting with a raised arm. The expanded text is divided into sub-sections. There is one on "Who we are," where the managers of the site introduce themselves as "Ilya from Haifa and Andrei from Arad," and it is related there that the members of the organization are "people who have pride in themselves and are sick of living among the dirty bastards." There is a section on "Who our enemies are," where all the "enemies" are extensively documented: the Jews, the Arabs, the immigrants from all Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union, the Moroccans, the foreign workers - in short, the "black-asses." In the material about the Arabs there is even a practical suggestion to enlist in the IDF in a combat unit, in order to get weapons and begin to shoot at them in every possible circumstance.
In the guest forum on the site, other opinions can also be found - for example, that the hatred of Jews should lead to an alliance with the Arabs. There is also a "codex" section of rules of behavior for members of the organization, among them respect for parents, but also "not to be miserly, because a miser is a Zhid," a derogatory Russian word for Jew, approximately equivalent to "Kike." And notably there is a rich section of jokes, the greater part of which is devoted to all kinds of funny incidents in concentration camps that end badly for the Jews.
Those who follow phenomena of this sort say that in its structure and content, the site resembles neo-Nazi sites in Russia, and strong connections exist between the activists here and the activists there. In the forum on the local site, there is an ambivalent attitude toward the fact that these proud white people are living in Israel. There are those who attack them for this and there are those who say that it is in fact important that some of "our people" be in the "Jews' state," too. The members who live in Israel explain that they want to defend the true Russian person on Israeli soil. They have a mission.
Studied indifference
Avigdor Yardeni is one of the many people in the community of immigrants from the Confederation of Independent States who are concerned about the spread of this phenomenon. Yardeni (whose name was originally Mashogiyan), the son of a Jewish mother and an Armenian father, immigrated to Israel 12 years ago. Here, he has fathered two "sabra" daughters and has tried a number of occupations: He worked as an engineer, as a salesman, as youth emissary for the Jewish Agency in Russia and as a businessman who went back and forth between Israel and his old homeland. Now he is mainly a concerned citizen who is anxiously keeping track of the spread of anti-Semitic phenomena in the Russian-speaking community, most notably the new neo-Nazi Internet site.
According to him, from a close reading of the contents of the site, there is no doubt that these are young people of army age and a bit older. The low literary level of Russian, which is full of mistakes, shows that these are people with little education, in whose poor language Yardeni identifies a marked Hebrew influence. That is, these are young people who came to Israel with their families under the Law of Return and have grown up here.
This story gives him no rest. In contrast to many others who just click their tongues, Yardeni has decided to do something about it. In coordination with about 10 immigrant friends and with the "Russian Israeli" newspaper in the Russian language, they are planning a convention from which a call will be issued to change the Law of Return in a way that will prevent such elements from arriving in Israel.
"My motivation is my daughters," says Yardeni. "They are going to live in this country. Ostensibly, we have other options. I have a mother and a sister in the United States, and we could have joined them, but there's something enjoyable about life here, which I don't intend to relinquish. But if Israel becomes an arena for swastika graffiti, of cries of Zhid and neo-Nazi sites, then why come here of all places? Absurdly, these phenomena are fading in the large Russian cities. In all of Moscow, with its 12 million inhabitants, there are about 5,000 organized neo-Nazis; if in Israel there are a few 100, or even a few dozen, that's a lot."
The White Israeli Union site is a new peak among a number of anti-Semitic phenomena in the Russian-speaking community in Israel. For about three years now, the Information Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel has been active. Its members track manifestations of anti-Semitism in this country through "open" sources, such as the press, and individual complaints that are made to them. The center is headed by Zalman Gilichinsky, 39, a painter by profession, a newly observant Jew who immigrated to Israel from Kishinev.
Over time he has accumulated hundreds of incidents that elsewhere in the world would be defined as "manifestations of anti-Semitism," but in Israel, the political system and the law-enforcement authorities relate to them with studied indifference. The range of incidents is wide: non-Jewish immigrants calling Jewish immigrants Zhid, an elderly Jewish immigrant woman in Jerusalem being beaten by a non-Jewish caregiver who calls her "Zhidovka," comments like "Hitler didn't finish the job," swastika graffiti found all the time in predominantly Russian-speaking neighborhoods, vandalism in synagogues and cemeteries.
Thundering silence
In November, 2002, an immigrant social worker was called urgently to a school in Kiryat Menachem in Jerusalem to help children and families who were hurt in a terror attack on a bus in the neighborhood. Distressed and anxious, she made her way to the neighborhood by bus. Before she got off the bus, one of the passengers, a Russian-speaking woman, said: "This isn't enough; we have to finish you off."
Recently, skinheads have been seen in Hatzor and Kiryat Shmona. In Russian bookstores in Israel, books that promote Holocaust-denial are sold openly (which is against the law), as are cassettes of neo-Nazi songs like "The Nazis are Coming."
Gilichinsky's attempts to enlist the help of the Anti-Defamation League, the president of Israel and the official site maintained by the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency have all been answered in the same spirit: "It's not our mandate. Our mandate is anti-Semitism around the world, not in Israel." However, newspapers in Europe, including the Russian Pravda, have been glad to publish comprehensive reports on the new phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Israel.
"I didn't think that after I'd left Russia I would ever go back to Pravda because of this issue," says Gilichinsky sarcastically, but the policy of silencing things in Israel reminds one of the policy that prevailed in the Soviet Union - a policy of silencing anything that is not in agreement with the official doctrine."
Even if there is not really a doctrine as such, clearly these phenomena are being ignored in a surprising way. Perhaps this derives from shock at the rise in anti-Semitism in the only place in the world that is supposed to be exempt at least from this phenomenon. But deep down, and especially in light of the thundering silence of Knesset members who are supposed to be representing the immigrant public, it is possible that there are other weighty reasons for this silence.
At the immediate political level, in taking a stance there is a certain amount of electoral risk. Judging by many forums and chat groups on the Internet, the voting patterns of this population that is hostile to Israel and the Jewish people that dwells here are scattered all over the political spectrum from right to left. Among them there are supporters of Shinui and Meretz, who see these parties as a liberal opening for realizing their aspirations. There are supporters of the National Union, who are attracted to the bullying nature of the movement and the hatred of Arabs. But more than this, it appears that the entire political spectrum and the organizations associated with it have chosen not to relate to the issue because it touches the most sensitive nerves in the national ethos: the Law of Return and the definition of the state on the "Jewish-democratic" axis.
Demographic madness
"There is a metaphysical dimension in the Law of Return that comes in to compensate for every drop of Jewish blood for which the Nazis wanted to slaughter the Jewish people,"says writer and essayist Maya Kaganskaya, who has also made a study of fascism in Russia. "Metaphysically, I also agree with it. But in the real sense, the Jewish people is in danger because of it. There is a problem here that is difficult to solve. It's easy to deal with the neo-Nazi movement - they should simply be thrown out of here. I am familiar with this phenomenon from Russia, where it's fairly popular. Nazis and Hitler become surrounded by a halo of romanticism in the struggle against the new world. But the real problem is the Law of Return. A Jewish state according to Jewish religious law and a state built on the Law of Return as it stands both lead to the end of the state. It is necessary to bring together intellectuals, demographers and legal experts who will reexamine to what extent and according to what test it is possible to accept immigrants here."
MK Yuri Stern of the National Union says that for a long time now his movement has considered it necessary to examine whether in existing legislation there are enough sanctions against anti-Semitism in Israel, but it has yet to do so.
"The time has come," he says. "There are enough people here with an anti-Semitic background, and when life is difficult and tense, these things burst out. Even if this is a phenomenon of limited social and political importance, it is cruel and unacceptable."
But this whole issue requires delicate handling and a clear and sharp distinction between non-Jews who have come here under the Law of Return and have linked their fate to the country's fate, and those elements that are clearly hostile; between phenomena of mere hooliganism or youthful naughtiness, however perverse, and real danger. It is also important to distinguish between an organization that aims to undermine the foundations of the state and legitimate cultural demands of the non-Jews who have come here under the expanded Law of Return.
It must be understood that there are cases in which a verbal anti-Semitic reaction is a response to racism encountered here by non- Jewish immigrants, especially the young people whose lives the Israeli establishment embitters, pushing them to alienation from the state. In this tangle of nuances, on Israeli soil that is in any case racist, all these distinctions are critical in order to isolate from them the truly dangerous phenomena.
But above all, dealing with the phenomenon must begin with the demographic madness, whereby everyone is welcome to come here as long as he is not an Arab. Even if he hates the state, even if he hates Jews, he is considered a positive contribution to the needs of the demographic head-count. About a year ago, Lutfi Mashour, the editor of the Arabic newspaper Al-Sinara, told Haaretz that while the Jews are obsessing about the Arab demographic threat, a demographic problem is burgeoning for them in quite a different place.
Yardeni, who defines himself as a "liberal rightist," agrees with Mashour: "The cure is far worse than the illness," he says. "I am thoroughly ashamed of having participated at the time in this system of bringing over everyone possible. I am against this demographic madness that you describe, in the framework of which we bring in the sickest elements."
And Gilichinsky says bitterly that he was promised one thing by the Jewish Agency emissaries in Russia with absolute certainty: that only in Israel would he not encounter anti-Semitism. But this promise, too, was not kept and instead he has found the classical Israeli policy of not really dealing with any complex issue. Everything will be fine, they tell him.