Russia closes the agency that deals with emigration to Israel

Russia threatens to ban a major non-profit Jewish agency that helps immigrants to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of deterioration the Kremlin’s relations with Israel and the far-reaching consequences of the war in Ukraine.

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

The move by the Russian government was a broadside against Jews in Russia and appeared to reverse the Russian president’s efforts Vladimir Putin for years to build bonds closer with Israel and the Jewish community.

The preliminary hearing was set for July 28 and the Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapidhe said Thursday that he would send a delegation to Russia for targeted talks keep the agency operating there.

“The Jewish community in Russia is deeply connected to Israel,” Lapid said in a statement.

“We will continue to act through diplomatic channels so that the important activity of the Jewish Agency is not interrupted.”

The Ministry of Justice did not disclose why it was trying to close the Russian branch of the agency and did not respond to a request for comment.

But according to a Jewish Agency official, the ministry sent a letter about two weeks ago to the agency’s Moscow office accusing it of violating privacy laws by keeping details of applicants for emigration to Israel in a database.

The official, who was not allowed to speak publicly during the legal process, said the letter included a complaint unrelated to the legal claims:

that Israel has drawn some of the best minds out of Russia, home to hundreds of thousands of people. of Jewish descent.

After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Israel became a major destination in a wave of emigration, an exodus that included many Russian tech industry workers.

Some 16,000 Russian citizens they have registered as immigrants in Israel since the start of the war, more than three times as many as last year; other 34,000 arrived as tourists.

The Jewish Agency official said Russian discontent with Israel over a number of other issues could also help explain the new Russian pressure.

These include Israeli military activities in Syria and a dispute over church property in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials have become increasingly outspoken in their criticisms of Russia’s war in Ukraine after initially trying to tread a diplomatic path. intermediate.

Israel last week began providing helmets and other protective gear to Ukrainian relief forces and civilian organizations after previously refusing to do so, and Lapid signed a joint statement with the president. Joe Biden expressing “concern about the ongoing attacks against Ukraine”.

“The attempt to punish the Jewish Agency for Israel’s stance on the war is deplorable and offensive,” Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs said Thursday. Nachman Shayit’s a statement.

“The Jews of Russia cannot be separated from their historical and emotional connection with the State of Israel”.

The Jewish Agency, founded nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in helping found Israel in 1948 and facilitated the emigration of millions of Jews from around the world.

It describes itself as the largest non-profit Jewish 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 widespread discrimination, until its later years.

About 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union came to Israel from the late 1980s to the late 1990s.

The agency now helps the Russians with Jewish roots to move to Israel and organizes Sunday schools and Hebrew classes throughout Russia.

It is also active in Ukraine and provides emergency aid to the country’s Jews.

Its Russian-language website invites visitors to enter the names and email addresses of Jewish relatives in Ukraine to allow the agency to “help rescue them from the war zone, provide them with temporary shelter, and allow them to repatriate. in Israel “.

In a telephone interview, Yuri Kanner, president of the Russian Jewish Congress, the Russian government’s decision to liquidate the agency represented a severe blow to the Russian Jewish community, although a complete dismantling of its operations could still be avoided.

He predicted that the flow of Russians moving to Israel, as evidenced, he said, by a sharp increase in interest in learning Hebrew, would further increase.

“It is possible that someone thought that doing so could limit” Russian emigration to Israel, he said of the Jewish Agency’s possible ban.

“I think the result will be different, it will give new impetus to the wave of starts”.

Kanner said that, at the time, he was not seeing an increase in anti-Semitism in Russian society or a crackdown on Jewish life in Russia.

But the government’s move against the high-profile Jewish Agency comes in the midst of a rapid change in Putin’s domestic geopolitical and political landscape, bringing echoes of the Soviet era, when Jews suffered because they were seen as having double loyalty.

Putin has worked for years to foster links with the Jewish community and Israel.

He supported the construction of a Jewish museum in Moscow and received the then Prime Minister of Israel in 2018 Benjamin Netanyahu as the guest of honor at the Victory Day Parade of World War II in Moscow.

But the war in Ukraine has left Putin looking for allies in his growing conflict with the West, while fueling a sprawling campaign against anyone inside Russia with suspicious loyalty.

Earlier this week, Putin visited Iran, Israel’s archenemy, and celebrated an increasingly close relationship in a meeting with the country’s supreme leader.

Within Russia, the government cracked down on numerous organizations with foreign ties this year, from German political foundations to the US-funded Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

In December, he used a Moscow court to liquidate International Memorialthe country’s leading human rights organization, in a trial similar to the one underway against the Jewish Agency.

And in Israel, a policy long influenced by a large and influential Russian-speaking diaspora is moving away from the Kremlin.

Naftali Bennettwhen the war broke out in February, the Israeli prime minister avoided direct criticism of Russia, citing Israel’s security interests in Syria, as well as the need to protect the security and free movement of Jews both in Ukraine and abroad .

Lapid, who took office as prime minister on July 1 after the collapse of the Bennett government, largely abandoned Bennett’s attempts to mediate the war and said that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine.

For Jews who remained in Russia, the Jewish Agency’s apparent crackdown was the last nerve-wracking twist.

In Volgograd, southern Russia, a leader of the Jewish community, Yael Ioffe, said in a telephone interview that the rate of emigration to Israel from her city seemed to have duplicate in the last months.

He said people of Jewish origin emigrated not out of fear of the persecution of Jews, but out of “the unstable situation in general, or the expectation of an unstable situation”.

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