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Pushing Away
Russians
Former Soviet Jews in Israel want their non-Jewish
former countrymen out of the immigration pack.
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Israel Corrspondent
Rehoveot,Israel
T
he determined man once
known as Constantin Look
is a man with a mission: to
change the Law of Return
so as to substantially reduce the num-
ber of non-Jewish immigrants from
the former Soviet Union.
Look showed his own dedication
to the cause when, three days after he
arrived here in October 1979, he
changed his name to Yigael Yehudi,
which means "salvation for the Jews."
After that he founded a group called
"The Organization to
Preserve the Jewish Nature of
Israeli Society."
Its core members were
men and women who, like
himself, had been Zionists
"back there," many of whom
were rewarded by the Soviets
with jail time. When finally
permitted to make aliya, they
were fulfilling a dream.
This makes them deeply suspicious
of contemporary immigrants from
their homeland, almost all of whom
emigrate for purely economic reasons.
Worse yet, as Yehudi and companions
see it, non-Jews account for up to 50
percent of the newcomers. Thus, they
endanger the very character of the
state. (Absorption and Immigration
ministry officials have put the number
around one-third.)
In the opinion of Yehudi and his
friends, several factors are responsible
for this phenomenon:
• The desire of government and
Jewish Agency officials to bring in a
maximum number of immigrants;
• The attempt of Natan Sharansky,
Avigdor Lieberman and other politi-
cians of Russian origin to augment
their base of electoral support;
• The ease with which forged doc-
uments attesting to a person's
Jewishness can be obtained;
• The Law of Return, under the
provisions of which non-Jews married
to Jews or with Jewish ancestors can
come in and immediately receive both
material benefits and citizenship.
But this has to be stopped, says
Yehudi. First of all, in common with
many local authorities on constitu-
tional law, he says that citizenship
should not be automatically bestowed
on newcomers. Instead, Israel should
initiate a naturalization process such
as exists in the United States and
almost every other country in the
world. In other words, a person
would have to acquire a degree of
basic knowledge about the country
and wait for a number of years before
applying for citizenship.
Secondly, Yehudi's group would like
Efforts are under way
to rein in non-Jewish
immigration to Israel.
to see the admission of non-Jews lim-
ited to the wives and children of Jews.
They claim that the mass arrival of
non-Jews has already had a negative
effect. A document recently issued by
the Organization to Preserve the
Jewish Nature of Israeli Society states,
for example, that the word Zhid —
the Russian derogatory word for Jew
— is heard more and more often in
Israeli streets and anti-Semitic graffiti
in Russian is now defacing property
in Ashkelon, Ashdod and elsewhere in
the country.
Yehudi's comments, joined by the
far more incendiary statements —
United Torah Judaism Knesset mem-
ber Shmuel Halpert calls, the non-
Jews "a fifth column" — have been
harshly denounced as racism by a
clear majority of Israelis. But the
impact on Israel of non-Jewish immi-
grants from the former. Soviet Union
is nevertheless an issue that deserves
serious consideration.
It is one that is far from en route
to being solved. Fl