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23 -29 May 2002
Issue No.587
International
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
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Whose right to return?
Growing anti-Semitism in France has renewed calls for Jews of the Diaspora to
emigrate to Israel. Iason Athanasiadis on the Zionist version of the right to return
Click to view caption
The Le Pen saga may have stunned large parts of moderate Europe but it has
delighted Israel's right-wing Likud government, who have used it as a plug to attract
more Jewish immigrants to the troubled land. While tens of thousands took to the
streets throughout France to protest against Le Pen's initial shock-success at the
polls, the Israeli government turned the growing anti- Semitism to its advantage in its
bid to convince Europe's affluent Jewish communities to migrate to Israel.
The mounting economic and political turmoil that has afflicted the world since the 11
September attacks is being milked for all its worth by Israel and world Zionist
organisations to revive Jewish emigration to the "Jewish homland". The Jewish
Agency and the Israel Absorption Ministry are targeting Jewish communities in
Argentina, France and South Africa as potential reservoirs of new immigrants.
Yaguil Allouche, a spokesperson for the Union of Jews in France and North Africa,
predicts that between 7,000 and 10,000 Francophone Jews may emigrate to Israel in
the next 10 years. Last month brought a record 3,000 inquiries at the Israeli
Consulate in Paris, a 500 per cent increase on March.
Economic enticements are being used to win over potential immigrants. Efforts are
particularly concentrated in Argentina, where a severe economic crisis has caused a
drastic decline in the population's living standards. Jewish Agency Director Sallai
Meridor reports that the economic situation of the Argentine Jewish community is
very grave. "Twenty thousand former businessmen and professionals are reduced to
accepting handouts at food kitchens," he said. "The Jewish educational system, once
the best in South America, is in disarray, and we do not know how many children will
return to school after the summer vacation. Everywhere there has been an upsurge
in interest to immigrate to Israel."
Yerachmiel Barilka, a Jewish Argentinean who immigrated to Israel 25 years ago and
maintains contact with new immigrants from his former homeland, says that in
addition to the Jewish Agency emissaries, representatives of cities in northern Israel
have also travelled to Argentina to seek out Jews and encourage them to make the
move to Israel.
But official statistics issued by the Jewish Agency, the body in charge of Jewish
immigration, remain dismal. Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began in September 2000,
immigration to Israel has nose-dived. The ongoing suicide attacks have rattled the
Israeli public and turned a diminishing flow of new arrivals into a trickle. In a
country
where the Arab birth-rate exceeds that of the Jews, a steady flow of new immigrants
is essential if Israel is to preserve its Jewish majority.
The immigration figures for 2001, therefore, are particularly discouraging for the
Israeli government. Though Israel's population has grown by approximately 142,000
people and immigration from Argentina boomed by 27 per cent, only 44,000 of the
total are Jewish immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union with significant
numbers from Ethiopia and Argentina. Overall, immigration was down 28 per cent
from 2000, the lowest figures since the late 1980s. In addition, no emigration figures
have been released, despite widespread rumours that the ongoing Intifada has
prompted sizeable numbers to leave.
Christina Garabedian, a London-based filmmaker who was recently in Israel and the
occupied territories said that, although nothing has been publicised in the Israeli
media, Tel Aviv- based Jewish acquaintances have confided in her that many people
are leaving the country for good. As she says, "Some secular Israelis, especially
affluent younger couples, are deciding to leave Israel. House prices are falling,
restaurants are empty and people live in fear."
Hoping to capitalise on 11 September, the global economic downturn and the
negative international reaction to Israel's West Bank campaign, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon recently declared: "We need to bring another million Jews here -- that needs
to be a top priority of all governments. There are half a million Jews in Latin
America,
many of them in distress now, who need to be taken out of there... About 230,000
Jews in Argentina are in dire material straits... There are hundreds of thousands of
Jews in the former Soviet Union, more than 100,000 in Brazil, 150,000 in Mexico,
600,000 in France, 80,000 in South Africa, thousands in Ethiopia."
"By 2020, we should gather most of the Jewish nation in the State of Israel," Sharon
has said. He considers this should be "the first objective of the government... to
bring
another million Jews soon." Yet he admits this "may take 12 to 13 years ."
A massive influx of French and Argentinean Jews would be a welcome prospect for
the Israeli government. Ariel Sharon, the architect of the settlement map, and several
of his Likud Party members, have harshly criticised their colleague, the former Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir, for failing to populate the occupied Palestinian territories
with ex-Soviet Jews when they first started arriving in 1989. Should this latest push
for fresh Jewish immigrants succeed, and bearing in mind the Israeli right- wing's
rhetoric about transferring Palestinian populations to Jordan, it is very likely that
the
battle for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will reach a bloody climax.
Le Pen's electoral upset has come at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian struggle had
reached its nadir. France's emergence as another potential source of immigration is
particularly welcome because French Jews are a prestigious demography: first world
Jews have consistently preferred to assimilate in their host countries rather than
emigrate.
"Unfortunately, Jews from the West don't come in droves as do Jews from distressed
countries," Jewish Agency spokesman Michael Jenkelowitz says. "The majority of
immigrants are not coming for ideological reasons."
The problem is not a new one. In 1980 the Jewish Agency said Israel faced a
"national emergency" because half a million Israelis preferred to live in the United
States. The issue is so entrenched that the Israelis have created a specific
vocabulary. The pejorative Hebrew word "yordim" (those who go down) is used to
describe Jews who emigrate from Israel, while the brightly positive "aliyah," meaning
ascent, refers to immigrants.
"You should not make too much of any statement Sharon makes," says Eyal Zisser,
a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. He
believes that every year 50,000 to 60,000 Jews come to Israel, mostly from the
former USSR. "All together, this has added up to half a million in the past decade,"
he says. "When Jews feel insecure politically or economically, such as in Argentina
or France, they look at other options and Israel is one of them.
"I do not think that it is realistic to expect all of them to come to Israel, but even
if a
small number came -- 20,000-30,000 a year -- it still means that 200,000-300,000 will
move to Israel in the next 10 years. If the Jews continue to come from the former
USSR, you get almost 1,000,000 in 10 years. The government doesn't need to exert
any special effort, the one million target will be reached naturally."
But Zisser concludes that Sharon will continue to try to change the current drift in
immigration, spurred on by the "ticking time-bomb" that he perceives the high
Palestinian birth-rate to be.
The contest between Jewish immigration and Palestinian fertility has become a
rallying call for the Israeli right. French demographer Philippe Fargues explains that
with natural population growth working to their advantage, the Palestinians will
eventually become a demographic majority in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
"Nowhere else in the world are populations at the two extremes of fertility transition
found side by side in such a small territory, with total fertility rates ranging from
barely
above the replacement level among Jews to one of the highest levels recorded in
today's world among Palestinians of the Gaza Strip," Fargues says.
For the time being, Jewish Agency officials are hard at work convincing Jews
throughout the world that a brighter future awaits them in Israel -- however
dangerous life there may be and however wretched the state of the economy.
But despite the readiness of South American Jews to relocate abroad, European and
US Jews remain unconvinced. According to Tanya Reinhart, a professor of
linguistics and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University, Sharon and the Foreign
Ministry
are trying to use the Le Pen phenomenon to encourage Jews to immigrate to Israel.
Most vocal is Interior Minister Eli Yisha who, Ha'aretz reported, called the heads of
the Jewish community in France to express his worries about Le Pen's success. "He
then urged the heads of the community to start packing their suitcases," Reinhart
said. "But in the case of France, I don't think that these... appeals will have any
real
impact. The Ministry of the Interior still thinks that the better chances are from
Argentina."
Although Chirac's victory has banished the threat of Le Pen's racist policies for the
while, long-term concerns may lead to an exodus of French Jews, as is now
happening in South Africa. But as in South Africa -- where the Jewish community is
prioritising Australia and Canada ahead of Israel -- the end destination of the French
may still not be the Jewish state. So far, the French Jewish community has shown
scant interest in emigrating despite rampant unemployment and the renewed wave
of anti- Semitism that has recently led to 22 synagogues being attacked, a marked
increase in incendiary attacks, tomb defacement, anti-Semitic graffiti and verbal and
physical abuse of Jews.
Sharon has set a 15 to 20-year time limit for attracting another million immigrants to
Israel and creating enough settlements effectively to annex the Palestinian
territories.
His policy of "babies over bullets" may be the gravest threat yet to Palestinian
sovereignty.
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