US embassy cable - 04TELAVIV6060

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 006060 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE INFO NEA/PPD MQUINN, JSMITH, DBENZE, NEA/IPA 
 
JERUSALEM PASS ICD DANIELS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: IS, KPAO, ISRAELI SOCIETY 
SUBJECT: RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS IN ISRAEL: CULTURAL AND 
EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
1. Summary: During a recent meeting with PD staff, 
Professor Marina Nizhnik of Tel Aviv University 
discussed the Russian immigrant community of Israel, 
with particular emphasis on differences between the 
more established community that has resided in Israel 
for the past 10 years and the recent arrivals.  End 
summary. 
 
2. On Friday, November 12, the Assistant Information 
Officer and the Cultural Assistant met with Dr. Marina 
Nizhnik, a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv 
University whose research deals with the Russian 
immigrant community in Israel.  The Counselor for 
Public Affairs also participated in the meeting.  Dr. 
Nizhnik spoke about the disparate Russian immigrant 
communities in Israel, contrasting those immigrants who 
have been here for at least 10 years with those who 
have arrived within the past 5 years. 
 
3. Although the Russian immigrant community is 
typically treated as a monolithic unit within Israeli 
society, Dr. Nizhnik pointed out that there are many 
different groups which compose this community.  The 
Russian Israelis are a heterogeneous group from all 15 
of the former Soviet republics, and come from a wide 
range of economic, educational, social, cultural, and 
religious backgrounds.  The most important key to 
understanding differences within the Russian Israeli 
community is looking at the time period during which 
they immigrated, although this is a sensitive question 
which Dr. Nizhnik admitted is not very politically 
correct. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
"Non-Russian Russians; Non-Jewish Jews" 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
4. The earliest waves of emigration took place during 
the Soviet period, and while each emigre had his or her 
own reasons for leaving, a rising tide of anti-Semitism 
in the Soviet Union combined with the pressures applied 
on the Soviets to grant exit visas to Jews and the 
prospect of better economic conditions abroad to create 
strong incentives to leave.  Israel, with a multitude 
of state-funded programs to assist new arrivals, was 
the easiest place to resettle.  The Israeli Law of 
Return, one of the first pieces of legislation passed 
by the State of Israel, guarantees to any person who is 
Jewish the right to live in Israel and acquire Israeli 
citizenship.  This right extends to persons with at 
least one Jewish grandparent, as well as spouses of 
Jews and their offspring.  According to Israeli 
official data cited by Dr. Nizhnik, 96% of the 
immigrants from the Soviet Union in 1990 were Jewish as 
defined by halakhic or Jewish religious law, a stricter 
definition than that allowed under the Law of Return, 
although only 72% of them were identified as Jews 
according to their Soviet civil registrations (which 
included "nationality" or "ethnicity" as an 
identifier).  By 2000, a minority - 45% - of new 
immigrants from the 15 former Soviet states were Jewish 
according to the strict halakhic definitions, and only 
27% were identified as Jews according to their civil 
registrations. 
 
5. Of the most recent arrivals - those who have come to 
Israel since 2000 - Dr. Nizhnik observed that the 
younger the immigrant, the less likely it is that he 
thinks of himself as being Jewish.  Many of these 
newcomers never identified themselves as being Jewish 
before they came to Israel, and many continue to 
identify with the dominant religious traditions of 
their countries of origin, where various forms of 
Christianity have been adopted as state religions (to 
various extents) as part of the forging of a post- 
Soviet national identity.  In further contrast to the 
earlier waves of immigrants, the newcomers tend to be 
from countries other than Russia (predominantly 
Ukraine, with large numbers from Moldova and Belarus) 
and frequently do not speak Russian as a native 
language.  Dr. Nizhnik also noted that these newer 
arrivals are far more likely to hail from rural areas 
than the earlier immigrants, who were typically from 
urban centers. 
 
6. Dr. Nizhnik commented that the average level of 
education among immigrants tended to be higher among 
immigrants who arrived prior to 1990 than it is among 
the most recent immigrants.  Earlier immigrants tended 
to speak Russian as a native language, because 
instruction in the better schools in the non-Russian 
republics during the Soviet period was carried out in 
Russian.  Newer immigrants, identified from the moment 
of their arrival in Israel as "Russians" even if they 
are Ukrainians or Moldovans by birth, attempt to relate 
to the Russian community to the greatest extent 
possible.  Although they might not be native Russian 
speakers, they tend to find Russian an easier language 
for practical purposes than Hebrew.  And excluded from 
native or "Sabra" Israeli culture, they adopt Russian 
culture as a part of their own identity.  Dr. Nizhnik 
observed that the school-aged newcomers in particular 
take great pride in their adopted Russian background, 
asserting the superiority of Russian culture over what 
they view as the "barbaric, oriental" culture of native 
Israelis, even though they are frequently quite 
ignorant of Russian culture as well.  She related a 
conversation she had had with a high-school student 
born in Ukraine who was boasting in a literature class 
about the superiority of Russian authors.  When asked 
what his favorite work was by the famous Russian author 
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the student proudly named [Leo 
Tolstoy's classic] "War and Peace." 
 
-------------------------- 
"Union of Outsiders" 
-------------------------- 
 
7. The immigrants who arrived in the early 1990's from 
the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states have 
largely, though by no means universally, become 
integrated into Israeli society.  They have daily 
contact with other Israelis at work and school and use 
Hebrew in their daily lives, although they frequently 
continue to speak Russian at home, and their children 
are quite capable of moving between the Russian and 
Israeli spheres.  Those who have arrived since 2000 
have generally had a much more difficult time adapting. 
With linguistic, social, and other barriers to 
overcome, they tend to find it very difficult to enter 
the Israeli sphere.  In general, the extent to which 
parents are forced to rely on their children's language 
skills has greatly disrupted the family structures that 
these immigrants were familiar with in their home 
countries.  Dr. Nizhnik commented that in the 
interviews she has conducted in the course of her 
research, one theme has been that these immigrants have 
no particular desire to be in Israel.  The major factor 
in their decision to emigrate was their hope for better 
economic and educational opportunities for their 
children, and because of their ability to claim Jewish 
ancestry, they are able to come to Israel.  Many of 
them see Israel as a way station en route to eventual 
emigration to the United States or Canada. 
 
8. According to Dr. Nizhnik, the sense of exclusion 
from mainstream Israeli society among new immigrants is 
a major factor in a developing social trend - the 
relations between new immigrants from the former Soviet 
states and the Israeli Arab community, which also tends 
to be kept on the outside of Israeli society.  She 
observed that the last few years have seen significant 
growth in connections between these two groups.  Social 
interaction has become increasingly common, 
particularly among younger members of the two groups 
who use Hebrew as a common language.  Dr. Nizhnik also 
noted that cooperation in illegal activities between 
the two groups has also been on the rise.  A November 
4, 2004 article in Ha'aretz noted that nearly 30 
percent of police investigations opened on youth 
involve immigrant youth, even though they constitute 
only 12 percent of this sector of the population. 
 
9. Dr. Nizhnik pointed out that although these new 
immigrants are able to come to Israel on the basis of 
their Jewish ancestry, many of them did not think of 
themselves as being Jewish before emigrating, and this 
self-image does not change when they come here.  She 
observed that among some of the younger immigrants she 
has interviewed, they not only retain their self- 
identity as Christians when they immigrate, they also 
retain the anti-Semitic biases that they learned in 
their home countries. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
There are Russian Israelis, and then there are Russian 
Israelis 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
10. The nature of the relationship between Russian 
Israelis who arrived in the early 1990's and those who 
have arrived since 2000 depends greatly on where they 
live, but overall Dr. Nizhnik described this 
relationship as being fraught with tension.  Those who 
have successfully integrated themselves into mainstream 
Israeli society strive to set themselves apart in every 
way possible from the newcomers they see as being non- 
Russian and non-Jewish.  They are also acutely aware of 
the general perception of the newcomer population as 
bringing criminal activity into neighborhoods and 
schools.  Dr. Nizhnik also noted that the last general 
elections in Israel saw a startling development which, 
although quite small in numbers, could be the beginning 
of an interesting trend: a very small percentage of 
integrated Russian Israelis voted for the ultra- 
conservative party Shas because of Shas's objective of 
overhauling the Law of Return to make the definition of 
who is qualified to immigrate to Israel more strict - 
which would disqualify many of those immigrating today. 
 
CRETZ