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СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫЕ ПРИЛОЖЕНИЯ
ЗАПАДНЫЕ ЖУРНАЛИСТЫ
О РАСИЗМЕ В ИЗРАИЛЕ
И ПРЕСЛЕДОВАНИИ РУССКИХ
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1369000/1369709.stm
BBC NEWS
Uprising spotlights Israel's Russian immigrants
Immigrants feel the uprising hit them especially hard. The suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Friday that killed
20 Israelis has traumatised Israel's one-million strong Russian immigrant community.
The bomb exploded outside a nightclub popular with Israeli Russians. Its playlist of Russian pop songs
draws teenagers from Israel's Russian community, which now accounts for a sixth of the country's
population.
Internal tensions
But the attack also highlighted tensions that have existed over more than a decade between Israelis born in
Israel and those who immigrated from Russia.
There was an angry reaction among Russian immigrants when Israeli religious leaders questioned whether
three of the victims should be buried in Jewish cemeteries, as their mothers were not Jewish.
Guy Chuck, an Israeli who emigrated to Israel from Russia at the age of 14 and now runs a
communications company in Tel Aviv, told the BBC that there was no "melting pot" in Israel, but that it
was a multi-cultural society.
"Certainly there is some misunderstanding between the people from Russia and people who were born
here," Mr Chuck said.
Russians bring their own cultural baggage with them, he said, and strive to preserve it in the new country.
Israelis were not always tolerant of that attitude, and therefore there were misunderstandings, he said.
"A lot of people in this country, I think, find it difficult to accept that the idea of the melting pot has failed,"
Mr Chuck said.
Secular and hawkish
The Russian community in Israel tends to be secularist, disapproving of the money given to ultra-orthodox
Jewish institutions, while at the same time being hawkish on security issues.
Guardian Unlimited Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 London
Immigrants lose hope as they bury children
Special report: Israel and the Middle East Russians feel robbed of a future in Israel after bombing
Suzanne Goldenberg in Tel Aviv Monday
June 4, 2001
The Guardian
Yelena and Yulia Nelimov were teenage girls consumed by teenage ambitions: to dress nicely, to have a
good time, and to spend as many weekends as possible at a seafront disco that was a magnet for young
immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Yesterday, on the day nine graves were dug for nine consecutive
funerals at a cemetery north of Tel Aviv, dazed friends and relatives eulogised the extraordinary closeness
of the sisters - Yelena, 18, and Yulia, 16, - who were among the 19 young Israelis killed by the suicide
bomb attack on Friday night. "They spent all their time together," said Marina Shniper, 15, their cousin,
who sometimes used to tag along. "They loved life so much. I never saw them cry; they were always
laughing." But when the twin coffins draped in the Israeli flag were lowered into the ground there were
screams of anguish as the Nelimovs' one remaining child, Alexei, was coaxed into reciting the unfamiliar
prayer for the dead. The girls were regulars at the Water World disco on the Tel Aviv seafront. The disco,
which played Russian pop songs in the heart of Tel Aviv, symbolised the existence of these young Russian
immigrants straddling the boundaries of adulthood and mainstream Israeli life. Almost all those killed in the
attack were from the former Soviet Union, members of an immigrant community vastly increased in the
past 10 years to account for 1m of Israel's 6.3m citizens. Even before the bombing, the Palestinian uprising
had claimed a disproportionate share of immigrants from this community, but this latest tragedy was too
much too bear. "I was in the Russian army, in the special forces, and I saw my comrades wounded. I
know what that means," the Nelimovs' uncle, Vladimir Shniper, said. "But that was the army. When it
happens to children, there are no words to describe the horror." Many at Yarkon cemetery yesterday said
they were no longer sure their future lay in their adopted homeland. "Now that I have seen what is
happening here I have decided to leave for Canada," said Yuri Poltialov, 21. "I don't see that we have a
future here; this country has been here for more than 50 years, and all it has seen is war." Arriving here as
children with the promise of a better life and greater security, the young Russian immigrants watched their
parents rebuild their lives from scratch, toiling at menial jobs, while the younger generation struggled to fit
in. Like many of the dead, the Nelimovs were raised by a single parent: their father, who is not Jewish,
stayed behind in Russia when the girls emigrated with their younger brother, mother, and grandmother six
years ago. They went the same secondary school in Tel Aviv. "Today I am at my fourth funeral," the
principal, Avraham Benvinisti, said, "and there are more to come." Only minutes earlier he had stood over
the grave of another pupil, Irina Nepomniashy, who arrived from Tashkent four years ago and was in the
business stream at the Shevah-Mofet school. Friends say she was determined to make something of her
life, to rise above the conditions that trapped her father in a factory job paying less than ё500 a month. But
her death brought an added cruelty. She was buried away from the other teenagers, shunned by the
religious authorities because they did not consider her ritually Jewish. Her grave, heaped with bouquets
and small memorial candles, stands in a cluster of oleander bushes, isolated even from the section of the
graveyard reserved for the unknown dead, because the religious authorities only recognise Jews born of
Jewish mothers, and Irina's mother, Raisa, is a Muslim. In the throes of their grief the Nepomniashy family
did not have the reserves of strength to protest at the insult. They merely gave in to quiet grumbling after
Raisa was carried from her only daughter's grave in the arms of two friends. A cousin, Alexander
Nepomniashy, said the justice minister, Meir Shitreet, had promised the family that Irina would be buried
with her classmates, but when they arrived at the cemetery other arrangements had been made. "She lived
here with everybody together, so she should have been buried with everyone together," Mr Nepomniashy
said. "As I see it now, Israel never really accepted her because it would not let her be buried like
everybody else."
http://www.russiajournal.com/weekly/article.shtml?ad=1386
RUSSIAN JOURNAL on-line and ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 18, 2002 Moscow
Immigrants give Israel a Russian flavor
Ten years on, Soviet Jews reshape Israeli society
JERUSALEM - The saleswoman at a downtown pharmacy switches from accented Hebrew to her native
Russian, explaining to an elderly customer how to take a prescription drug.
Around the corner, the Arbat restaurant prepares for the evening rush of its emigre patrons. Posters at a
nearby video store advertise a visiting Moscow pop star.
You can get by in Israel these days speaking only Russian.
Businesses run by immigrants - from travel agencies to non-kosher butchers to Russian-language
bookstores - dot the country. Newly formed theater groups put on plays in Russian. Immigrants frequent
Russian cafes and can choose from a dozen Russian-language periodicals.
In the 10 years since the Kremlin opened the gates to a Jewish exodus, 800,000 former Soviets have
arrived in Israel. Adding to the 150,000 who came in the 1970s, the immigrants now comprise Israel's
largest ethnic group.
(......) .
The newcomers, among them a large number of academics, doctors and engineers, have left their mark on
Israel.
(.......) .
With the influx of new citizens, Israel's overall education level jumped. Immigrant professors and scientists
have injected new blood into academic life and Israel's technology industry. The number of professional
orchestras has swelled from four to 11.
Yet, (......) many immigrants feel they don't quite belong.
Yevgeny Soshkin, 25, who edits a magazine sponsored by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, avoids
socializing with longtime Israelis, saying they are too intrusive and unrefined.
Soshkin's transition from the Ukrainian town of Kharkiv to the Israeli desert backwater of Arad in
December 1990 was fraught with pain and rejection. In his hometown, he had started attending medical
college. In Arad, the thin, dark-haired youth had to go back to high school.
" I suddenly found myself in hell," he says, comparing the unruly classroom to a "monkey cage."
His parents also had to scale down their expectations. His father, a former military academy lecturer, found
work as a janitor in a neighborhood of immigrants and his mother teaches biology in high school.
(..........)
The transition into Israeli society has been a bumpy ride. An initial euphoria in Israel over the wave of
Soviet immigrants quickly gave way to mistrust and disdain.
Strictly observant Jews felt the immigration tide carried too many non-Jews to the country, endangering its
Jewish character.
Many Israelis with roots in North African and Middle Eastern countries, who for years encountered
discrimination by the European-born Ashkenazi elites, envied the privileges granted to the newcomers.
(.......)
Some Israelis felt the immigrants were opportunists seizing a way to get out Russia, but caring little for
Zionist ideology.
In 1997, 63 percent of longtime Israelis polled for Israel Radio opposed encouraging more immigration
from the former Soviet Union and 80 percent viewed immigrants as competitors in the workplace. About
25 percent said they associated "nothing positive" with immigrants.
Dovish Israelis were angry with the newcomers for espousing hawkish views and accused them of being
ignorant of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.
The immigrants, in turn, complained about a hostile bureaucracy and a sense of isolation. Many could not
afford a decent apartment on their government stipend. About half the immigrants still don't work in their
professions. Two-thirds earn less than the average Israeli monthly pay of 6,146 shekels, or about $1,540.
Some of those suspected of lying about being Jewish had to take humiliating DNA tests. The Interior
Ministry sometimes refused immigration visas to non-Jewish relatives of young Russian men serving in the
Israeli army.
Mikhail Weiskopf, a prominent author who settled in Israel in 1972, says it was easier during the first,
smaller wave of immigration.
"We were also met with some hostility, yet there was much less of it," he says. "Integration seems to have
been easier in those days."
Squeezed into the same tiny country, the immigrants and longtime residents - themselves one-time
immigrants or children of immigrants - largely appeared to coexist without trying to understand each other.
(........)
By SERGEI SHARGORODSKY / The Associated Press
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