INTIMIDATING THE WORLD
ISRAELI GLOBAL TERRORISM:
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
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SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
WESTERN JOURNALISTS
About Racism In Israel And
PERSECUTION of Russians
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.
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Guardian Unlimited and 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. "
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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 4 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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