Putin lures back Russian Jews from Israel

When the faltering Soviet Union opened its exit gates, over a million Jews flocked to Israel. They are now Israel's top ice-skaters and chess masters and its most glamorous models. Soviet doctors and nurses staff many Israeli hospitals. They have their own television channels and newspapers, and their own billionaires and rough-edged politicians.

Now Vladmir Putin wants them back, it seems. The Israeli daily Haaretz on Monday ran an excellent expose claiming that under the guise of a Russian culture center in Tel Aviv, headed by a former KGB spy and a noted Hebrew expert, Putin is trying to lure back the Russian professionals who left for Israel in the mid-1970s and onwards. Haaretz claims that Putin established a group called “the Sons of the Homeland” to keep open links between Mother Russia and its wayward children. The daily says that over 3 million Russian-speaking Jews are scattered over five continents, but many of the ones that Putin wants back –-those with education and entrepreneurial savvy, not to mention lots of cash-- are concentrated in Israel.

So, is it working? Haaretz doesn't explain what enticements the Russian cultural center seems to be offering, other than better wages and swift nationalization. But the paper cites statistics from Israel's Immigration Ministry showing that 100,000 Jews from the ex-USSR have moved back to Russia and the Ukraine, and another 70,000 Israelis are living in Moscow, but hanging on to their old passports in case the Russian economy sours.

While this is going on, the Israelis are busy in Russia trying to get more Jews to emigrate. But not all Soviet Jews that ended up in Israel are, well, that Jewish. An Israeli mayor told me that when he assisted at the burial of a soldier killed during the 2006 Lebanon war, he saw the deceased's mother crossing herself –as did many of the dead soldier's comrades and buddies. Estimates say that up to 300,000 of the ex-Soviets who ended up in Israel may not be entirely kosher. They fudged documents claiming Jewish ancestry. And that may explain why a few Russian teenagers set up their own neo-Nazi gang and vandalized a synagogue and a graveyard. Those are the ones that Israeli would like to see queuing up outside the new Russian Cultural Center for a ticket to Siberia.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem