Russia is threatening to ban a major Jewish non-profit organization that helps people immigrate to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of the Kremlin’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and the far-reaching effects of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian Ministry of Justice is seeking to liquidate the nonprofit’s Russian branch, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which operates in conjunction with the Israeli government, according to a report from a Moscow court.
The Russian government’s move amounted to a broad-based attack on Jews in Russia and appeared to negate President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts over the years to build closer ties with Israel and the Jewish community.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 28, and Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Thursday that he would send a delegation to Russia for talks to operate the agency there.
“The Jewish community in Russia is closely linked to Israel,” Mr Lapid said in a statement. “We will continue to act through diplomatic channels so that the important activity of the Jewish Agency does not stop.”
The Justice Ministry did not disclose why it wanted to close the agency’s Russian branch and did not respond to a request for comment.
But according to a Jewish Agency official, the ministry sent a letter to the agency’s Moscow office about two weeks ago, accusing it of violating privacy laws by keeping the details of applicants for emigration to Israel in a database.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly during the legal process, said the letter contained a complaint unrelated to the legal claims: that Israel has taken some of the brightest minds from Russia, where hundreds of thousands of people live. of Jewish descent.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Israel became one of the main destinations for a wave of emigration, an exodus involving many workers from Russia’s engineering industry. About 16,000 Russian citizens have registered as immigrants in Israel since the start of the war, more than three times as many as in all of last year; another 34,000 arrived as tourists.
The Jewish Agency official said Russia’s displeasure 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 also become increasingly outspoken in their criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine after initially attempting a diplomatic middle ground. Last week, Israel began supplying helmets and other protective equipment to Ukrainian rescue forces and civilian organizations after previously refusing to do so, and Mr. Lapid signed a joint statement with President Biden expressing his “concern about the ongoing attacks on Ukraine.” .
“The attempt to punish the Jewish Agency for Israel’s stance on the war is deplorable and offensive,” Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai said in a statement on Thursday. “The Jews in Russia cannot be separated from their historical and emotional connection to the State of Israel.”
Established nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the Jewish Agency played an important role in the establishment of Israel in 1948 and has enabled the emigration of millions of Jews from around 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 until recent years, where Jews faced ubiquitous discrimination. About a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived in Israel from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. The agency is now helping Russians with Jewish roots to move to Israel and provides Sunday schools and Hebrew classes throughout Russia.
It is also active in Ukraine and provides emergency aid to Jews there. The Russian-language website invites visitors to enter the names and email addresses of Jewish relatives in Ukraine so that the agency can “help rescue them from the war zone, provide them with temporary shelter and allow them to repatriate to Israel. ”
In a telephone interview, Russian Jewish Congress chairman Yuri Kanner said the Russian government’s decision to liquidate the agency was a blow to the Russian Jewish community, even if a complete dismantling of its operations could still be averted. . He predicted that a surge in interest in learning Hebrew would increase the flow of Russians moving to Israel — as evidenced by a surge in interest in learning Hebrew, he said.
“It’s possible someone thought they could limit Russian emigration to Israel with this,” 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 departures.”
Mr Kanner said he did not register an increase in anti-Semitism in Russian society at this time or see a crackdown on Jewish life in Russia. But the government’s move against the high-profile Jewish Agency comes amid a rapid shift in Putin’s geopolitics and in the domestic political landscape — with echoes of the Soviet era, when Jews were seen as having dual loyalties.
For years, Mr. Putin worked to maintain ties with the Jewish community and with Israel. He supported the construction of a Jewish museum in Moscow and hosted Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister, as the guest of honor at the 2018 World War II Victory Day parade in Moscow.
But the war in Ukraine has left Putin looking for allies in his escalating conflict with the West as he fuels a growing campaign against anyone in Russia with suspicious loyalties. Earlier this week, Mr Putin visited Iran, Israel’s nemesis, and celebrated a rapidly growing relationship in a meeting with the country’s supreme leader.
Within Russia, the government has cracked down on numerous organizations with foreign ties this year, from German political foundations to the American-funded think tank Carnegie Moscow Center. In December, it used a Moscow court to liquidate Memorial International, the country’s most prominent human rights organization, in a proceeding similar to the one currently pending 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 Bennett, Israel’s prime minister when war broke out in February, avoided direct criticism of Russia, citing Israel’s security interests in Syria and the need to protect the security and free movement of Jews in both Ukraine and Russia.
Mr Lapid, who became prime minister on July 1 after Mr Bennett’s government fell, has largely given up on Mr Bennett’s attempts to mediate in the war and has said that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine.
For Jews who have remained in Russia, the apparent crackdown on the Jewish Agency was the latest disturbing twist. In Volgograd in southern Russia, a leader of the Jewish community, Yael Ioffe, said in a telephone interview that the number of emigrations to Israel from her city appeared to have doubled in recent months.
She said that people of Jewish descent did not emigrate for fear of persecution of Jews, but because of the general “unstable situation – or the expectation of an unstable situation.”
