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Russia Moves to Close Agency Handling Emigration to Israel


Russia is threatening to ban a large Jewish non-profit agency dedicated to helping migrants to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of the Kremlin’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and its deep consequences. extended from the war in Ukraine.

The Russian Ministry of Justice is seeking to liquidate the Russian branch of the non-profit organization, Jewish Agency for Israel, which works in coordination with the Israeli government, according to a notice from a Moscow court.

The move by the Russian government tends to be anti-Jewish in Russia and appears to reverse President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts over the years to forge closer ties with Israel and with the Jewish community Thai.

A preliminary hearing has been set for July 28, and Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Israel on Thursday said he would send a delegation to Russia to negotiate to keep the agency operating.

“The Jewish community in Russia has a deep connection with Israel,” Mr. Lapid said in a statement. “We will continue to act through diplomatic channels so that the vital work of the Jewish Agency is not halted.”

The Justice Department did not disclose why it sought to close its Russia branch and did not respond to a request for comment.

But according to an official with the Jewish Agency, the ministry sent a letter about two weeks ago to the agency’s Moscow office alleging violations of privacy laws by withholding details of applicants. apply to immigrate to Israel in the database.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly during the proceedings, said the letter included a handle unrelated to legal claims: that Israel had taken some of its best minds out of Russia. , home to hundreds of thousands of people. Jewish origin.

After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Israel became one of the main destinations for the wave of migration, an exodus that included many workers from Russia’s technology industry. About 16,000 Russian citizens have registered to immigrate to Israel since the start of the war, more than three times more than all of last year; Another 34,000 came as tourists.

The Jewish Agency official said that Russia’s grievances against Israel on many other issues could also help explain the new Russian pressure. These include Israel’s military operations in Syria and Church property dispute in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials have also become increasingly outspoken in their criticisms of Russia’s war in Ukraine, after initially trying to take a middle ground diplomatic path. Last week, Israel began providing helmets and other protective equipment to Ukrainian rescuers and civilian organizations after an earlier refusal, and Mr. Lapid signed a joint statement with the President. Biden expressed “concern about the ongoing attacks on Ukraine”.

“Attempts to punish the Jewish Agency for Israel’s stance on the war is reprehensible and insulting,” Israel’s minister for public affairs, Nachman Shai, said in a statement on Thursday. “The Jews in Russia are inseparable from their historical and emotional connection to the State of Israel.”

The Jewish agency, established nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in the establishment of Israel in 1948, and has facilitated the emigration of millions of people. Jews from all over the world. It describes itself as the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world and runs social programs in Israel and for Jewish communities abroad.

The agency was banned in the Soviet Union, where Jews faced rampant discrimination, until its final years. About one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union came to Israel from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. The agency now helps Russian Jews move to Israel and runs Sunday schools and classes. Hebrew throughout Russia.

It is also active in Ukraine and is providing emergency aid to the Jews there. Its Russian website invites visitors to enter the names and email addresses of Jewish relatives in Ukraine to authorize the agency to “help rescue them from a war zone, provide them with temporary shelter, and allow them to return to Israel.” .”

In a phone interview, the President of the Congress of Russian Jews, Yuri Kanner, said that the Russian government’s liquidation of the agency is a blow to Russia’s Jewish community, even if the destruction completely quit its activities can still be prevented. He predicts that the influx of Russians moving to Israel – evidenced by, he said, by the dramatic increase in interest in learning Hebrew – will increase even more.

He said of the Jewish Agency’s potential ban: “Someone might think that by doing this they can limit the emigration of Russians to Israel. “I think the outcome will be different – it will give a new impetus to the wave of departures.”

Mr. Kanner said that, for now, he does not subscribe to a rise in anti-Semitism in Russian society or witness a crackdown on Jewish life in Russia. But the government’s move against the High Zionist Agency comes against a backdrop of Mr. Putin’s geopolitics and a rapidly changing domestic political landscape – rekindling echoes of the Soviet era, when Jews were seen as having dual allegiance.

For years, Mr. Putin has worked to cultivate ties with the Jewish community and with Israel. He advocated the construction of a Jewish Museum in Moscow and hosted Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister, as the guest of honor at the World War II Victory Day parade in Moscow in 2018.

But the war in Ukraine has left Putin groping for allies in an escalating conflict with the West, while cultivating an expansive campaign against anyone inside Russia with worthy allegiance. doubt. Earlier this week, Mr. Putin visited Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy, and celebrated the rapidly tightening ties during a meeting with the country’s supreme leader.

Inside Russia, the government this year cracked down on many organizations with foreign ties, from German political organizations to the US-funded Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. In December, it used a Moscow court liquidation of Memorial Internationalthe country’s most prominent human rights organization, in a proceeding similar to one currently underway against the Jewish Agency.

And in Israel, a politics long dominated by a large and influential Russian-speaking population is moving away from the Kremlin. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister when war broke out in February, avoided direct criticism of Russia, citing Israel’s security interests in Syria as well as the need to protect the safety and freedom of movement of people. Jews in both Ukraine and Russia.

Mr Lapid, who took office as prime minister on July 1 after the fall of Mr Bennett’s government, abandoned much of Mr Bennett’s efforts to mediate the war and said Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine. .

For Jews who remain in Russia, the apparent crackdown on the Jewish Agency is the latest twist to their confusion. In Volgograd, southern Russia, Yael Ioffe, a Jewish community leader, said in a phone interview that the rate of emigration to Israel from her city appears to have doubled in the months recently.

She said that people of Jewish origin migrated not out of fear of persecution by the Jews, but because of “the unstable situation – or the expectation of an unstable situation”.



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