The newest imported delicacy in Israel: anti-Semitism!

YNet reports:

Here is a phenomenon that none of the authorities in Israel want to deal with: Anti-Semitism by people who have come from the Soviet Union, and who use the word 'Jew' as a legitimate curse. Number of incidents is on the rise

“I was walking my dog in Tel Aviv. When I went to cross the street there was a drunk- looking man standing next to me. My dog got scared and started to bark at him. I apologized and continued walking. I suddenly felt someone push me and I fell on the floor. The drunken man pushed me to the ground, took the leash and started to choke the dog. He was screaming at me “Stinking Zhidovka! (A derogatory name for a Jew in Russian). You Jews destroyed Russia and disturb all the normal people living here”. (Ella Shapira, a Russian immigrant)

“Everyone sweeps the issue of anti-Semitism in Israel under the rug” says Zalman Glichevsky, the president of the organization. “There is a leading skinhead website, and I discovered that they have a discussion group which includes Russian speakers from Israel”. Glichevsky, who immigrated to Israel in the early nineties, began to investigate the matter. He put an ad in a newspaper for Russian speakers and appealed to anyone who had ever experienced anti-Semitism in Israel.

Russian immigrants beating Jewish immigrants

“To my surprise”, he tells, “I received hundreds of responses and I continue to receive them today....Shapira is angered by the comprehensive disregard of the problem. “This is a subject that no one likes or is afraid to speak of. For the workers in the Jewish Agency, bringing new immigrants to Israel is a good business, many people profit from it. But they are bringing people who have no connection to Judaism, and some who have been brought up to hate it. I often encounter these situations...a few weeks ago I went into a clothing store and the two saleswomen began to talk about me in Russian: 'Here is a dirty Jew, she is going to touch everything and make it dirty.' They were shocked when I answered them in Russian and explained to them that it is forbidden to speak that way”.

I fail to understand how any Israeli government agency can live with itself when converts are called for to be excluded from the Law of Return, but this comes in under the auspices of the same law. And even under the proposed changes, it still won't alleviate this problem but perhaps even exacerbate it, as the new conditions, "alternatively", call for Israeli citizenship to be offered to "relatives of Jews currently covered by the Law of Return." (Granted, charedi leaders don't back the proposed legislation, but still.)

Observant Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel -- who by any other standards in Edut ha'Mizrach would be charedi -- were told flatly that their lineage was not provably Jewish and that they would have to convert. Yet members of Nazi organizations are allowed to operate with no question in their status as Jews? Officials talk seriously about barring Ethiopian immigrants from even entering one town, but immigrants from Europe are given carte blanche? This can happen?

I can't help but fault, at least partially, if not by commission then by omission, Tzafon Tel Aviv Ashkenazi elitism and ethnocentricity for allowing this to happen. I'm not generalizing -- the majority of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic incidents within Israeli borders are "Russian-speaking youth", some the "descendents of Jews" -- were there an influx of "descendents of Jews" (70% of whom do not qualify as Jews under Jewish Law) from Arabic-speaking countries bringing with them Hamas mindsets, I highly doubt it would be tolerated to this point.

500 incidents in 2001? An increase in 2003? Authentic Jews have to go around gathering signatures of rabbis and re-converting (or re-marrying, or re-divorcing) -- and there's this?

I'm pissed off and this can not be tolerated in any capacity. There has yet to be any serious talk of reducing the unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe -- in anywhere near the same capacity as it's been spoken of for their Ethiopian or Indian counterparts. Other than racism, I fail to see why. I fail to see any more of a detrimental element the Jewish state could possibly contain. Nazi activity? Even if there's "no chance" of them "gaining any power."

If there's any pressing issue that calls for the revamping of the Law of Return, it for damn sure is not some underpaid Thai worker.

It's ha'Reich ha'Shlishi.

(Crossposted to Jewschool.com)