Israel Failing to Meet Challenge of Soviet Aliyah, Sharansky Charges

Former refusenik Natan Sharansky firmly believes that the aliyah of a half- million immigrants from the former Soviet Union since 1989 constituted an unprecedented historic challenge – one the Israeli government failed to meet.

Charging that Israel allowed the unique opportunities presented by the mass migration of Soviet Jewry to slip away, Sharansky stated that another million Jews in the former Soviet Union might make aliyah if they got the encouragement they need.

But the Israeli government has not understood the significance of events, he said, and has instead adopted a “business as usual” approach rather than offering a comprehensive vision for the absorption of the olim.

Sharansky made the comments during an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the Zionist Forum, an advocacy organization he heads for immigrants from former Soviet Union.

He cited the current political and economic instability in the former Soviet Union as presenting Israel with a “window of opportunity” of historic proportions for absorbing more Russian immigrants.

But the instability is not in itself sufficient cause to lead to more waves of immigration from the former Soviet Union, he said.

“After all,” Sharansky noted wryly, Jews “know how to survive. Even if today is worse than yesterday, (they) can imagine it could be worse tomorrow.

“While at the same (time) that we keep having the desire and the dream of `next year in Jerusalem,’ we feel that life is full if it is a life among other people in the Diaspora. We feel very comfortable (there),” he said.

Thus, in spite of all the instability, the Jews of the former Soviet Union need some kind of incentive to come to Israel, Sharansky said.

Because of the reports prospective get from their families or friends already in Israel, “each day they’re comparing why they should leave and why they should stay,” he said.

“That’s why, in this unstable situation, when the arguments for and against (emigrating) have almost the same weight, one little argument from here (Israel), one more encouragement from here, can change everything,” said Sharansky.

He noted that potential immigrants’ biggest fears and uncertainties, based on the information they get, are whether they will be able to work in their professions and whether their children will integrate happily into the Israeli school system.

For Sharansky, the core problem is the Israeli government’s concept of absorption, although he does not blame Absorption Minister Yair Tsaban.

The activist said Tsaban has little power to fight Finance Minister Avraham Shohat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who have maintained that successful absorption of the olim will occur as a natural byproduct of a healthy Israeli economy.

“That’s what’s good for a normal country,” and would be appropriate for the absorption of 30,000 to 40,000 immigrants annually in Israel, according to Sharansky.

But “it’s not good for a unique historical situation when (there was a) 10 percent increase in population in the space of three years,” he said. “And it’s not good for a Zionist state which has the aim of encouraging people to come as quickly as possible.”

And it certainly will not succeed in drawing a significant percentage of the Jewish population of the former Soviet Union to Israel, he maintained, noting that the Israeli government has to develop a plan to encourage more people to come.

The plan, he said, should focus on their specific concerns about jobs and schools and should recognize the unprecedented nature of this aliyah.

“After all, why are they making aliyah? Because of their children.

“But our leadership is not even thinking in these terms,” he said. Instead, “the government (absolved) itself (of) the responsibility to think about how to solve the problem (in the belief) that it would take care of itself.

“`We will give them some money and they will take care of themselves,'” is how he described the official attitude of the Israeli government to the situation.

Sharansky said he was told by top officials as early as 1988 not to be concerned because the immigrants would be absorbed the way they were absorbed in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

But the old models do not apply, he said.

At the heart of the matter, he stated, is the challenge to the “orthodox, fundamental concept of the Jewish state” that this aliyah poses.

“After all,” he said, “the idea with which the Jewish state was (founded) is that it was like a melting pot where a new type of Jew is born” after shedding his characteristics and identity from the Diaspora.

It meant that those who came here had to become Israelis as quickly as possible.

While this may have been appropriate at the beginning of statehood, said Sharansky, it no longer applies.

“Thank God, we already exist and we are a nation which justifies its existence correctly as a continuation of the Jewish people,” he said.

He noted that there is no longer “an absorption of Diaspora Jews by Israel, but a kind of synthesis, a mutual change of all of the Jewish world.”

There is no doubt that the Jews from the former Soviet Union have to change, and they are changing, said Sharansky.

But, he said, Israeli society, whether it wants to or not, is also changing, and officials are resisting that change.

“That’s why (officials) say, `In the 50s it was like this, why should it be different now?’ ” he said.

But this aliyah is different, according to Sharansky, who said that it is not Zionist in nature.

Olim from the former Soviet Union are professionally strong and very ambitious, and Israelis, whether working in universities, hospitals, hotels or gas stations, feel the competition, he said.

“So the aliyah becomes threatening and is hard for (Israeli) society to accept,” he said.

Sometimes “it is difficult not to despair,” he said. “But I hope that Am Yisrael, the Jews of the world, have much more inner power than their leaders (believe) they do.”