Fewer Come to Israel, And Many Are Leaving
Conflict, Economic Woes Contribute to Decline in Immigration
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 23, 2004; Page A17
JERUSALEM -- Anton Nosik was a 24-year-old physician in Moscow making $8 a month when the Soviet Union began to collapse in 1990. Suddenly free to travel abroad, he packed his bags and went off to see the world, eventually settling in Israel -- one of the more than 800,000 Soviet Jews who moved here in the 1990s after decades of religious persecution under communism.
Today, Nosik is back in Moscow, and so are thousands of other Russian Jews who immigrated to Israel, some of them soured by the Jewish state's anemic economy, limited job opportunities and dangerous security environment. At the same time, statistics show that immigration to Israel last year dropped to a 15-year low, which Israeli officials blame not only on the economic downturn and continuing violence, but also on the smaller reservoir of Jews in the former Soviet republics to draw from and a decrease in the flight from persecution by Jews around the world.
"I don't think everyone who can succeed elsewhere must abandon their success and go to Israel to be unemployed," Nosik said in a telephone interview from Moscow, where he heads Russia's largest Internet service provider and a thriving Internet news agency, capitalizing on a new high-tech career he developed during his seven years in Israel.
Israel is a country built on immigration whose leaders see the continuing influx of Jews as vital to its survival. The Palestinian population in recent years has grown almost three times faster than the Jewish population, statistics show, and without significant numbers of new immigrants, Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza could outnumber Jews within a decade, threatening Israel's future as a democratic, Jewish state.
After a two-year spike in immigration in 1990 and 1991, when about 375,000 people -- most of them from the Soviet republics -- poured into Israel, migration patterns remained fairly stable, with 60,000 to 80,000 new arrivals each year. Then in 2001, after the start of the Palestinian uprising, the number dropped to about 43,000. Last year, immigration plunged to 23,200, much of the loss due to a decline in arrivals from the former Soviet Union, according to immigration statistics.
Avraham Berkowitz, a rabbi in Moscow who is the executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia and other former Soviet republics, claims that a reverse migration is underway between Israel and the former Soviet republics, with more Jews now returning than moving to Israel -- an assertion denied by Israeli officials. The Israeli government does not maintain up-to-date statistics on citizens who move away permanently.
But other data reveal a remarkable trend: In the last two years, more Jews from the former Soviet Union have immigrated to Germany than to Israel, according to German and Israeli statistics.
"Israel and the people in Israel have tried their best, but it is impossible to please a million immigrants when there is a failing economy in Israel and an ongoing intifada," Berkowitz said. From his work with Jewish leaders in 13 countries, he estimates that at least 75,000 Jews have returned to former Soviet republics from Israel in the last five years, even though many say they hope to go back to Israel someday.
According to statistics from Israel's Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, about 72,000 Soviet Jews left Israel between 1989 and December 2003, roughly 7.7 percent of the 937,000 who came since the collapse of the Soviet Union. To be counted as having left, an Israeli must have remained out of the country for a full year, said Shmuel Adler, the ministry's director of planning and research. He said about 13,210 Soviet Jews left in 2002 -- the last year for which complete statistics are available -- most likely for Europe or the United States.
In one opinion survey of Russian immigrants in Israel, about 26 percent of the respondents said they were thinking of leaving Israel, up from 6 percent before the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, according to Eliezer Feldman, a statistician for the Mutagim Institute, an Israeli polling company.
Israeli immigration experts said there were no precise studies to explain why Jews move to Israel and why they move away, but referred to what they called push-pull factors that repel people from some countries and pull them to others. In interviews with Israeli immigration officials and experts, sociologists, pollsters, Jewish community leaders here and abroad and about 20 Jewish immigrants who live in Israel or recently moved away, common factors emerged to explain current immigration trends: the economy and violence.
Mike Rosenberg, head of immigration and absorption for the Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental group responsible for bringing Jews to Israel, said that historically "most Jews who came to Israel were fleeing something. They were refugees running for their lives," Today, by contrast, most are coming by choice, "and everybody has somewhere to go back to." He added: "There's nothing pushing them now. What could pull them to Israel? Peace, general economic improvement, jobs, and the feeling that Israel is your place."
Svetlana Krasilshik said she came to Israel in 1999 when she was 18 because she was Jewish and knew she would receive help in relocating. But she returned home to St. Petersburg last year because she missed her family and was frightened by the deteriorating security situation.
"If I had a child, I would not want to panic every time he was out of the house," Krasilshik said in a telephone interview. "The situation really prevents you from having a relaxed life."
Krasilshik said she wanted to return someday to Israel with her parents. "I see myself living in Israel in the future," she said. "I feel like I am part of the Israeli people."
Eitan Dudnick, 21, an Israeli soldier serving in the Gaza Strip, said he came to Israel with his family from Ukraine in 1989 because the economic and political situation there was "a mess" and, as Jews, they saw an opportunity for a better life in Israel. Last May, after his father had been unemployed for a year and with no end to the Palestinian uprising in sight, his entire family -- mother, father and two sisters age 6 and 11 -- moved to Toronto. He went with them, obtained Canadian citizenship, then returned to Israel to complete his military service.
"I have two younger sisters, and they really couldn't enjoy their childhood. They couldn't go out, they couldn't go on school trips because our parents were frightened, and it was really affecting our family life," Dudnick said.
Israeli officials say that after almost 1 million Jews migrated to Israel from the former Soviet republics, today there are only about 400,000 Jews remaining there, and that most of those who wanted to leave have already done so.
Despite recent declines, Israeli officials say the number of people who immigrated to Israel last year, 23,200, is still significantly higher than during many years in the 1980s, when fewer than 14,000 migrated each year to Israel.
"Terrorists have not succeeded in stopping immigrants from coming to Israel, and that for me is the most important victory," said Sallai Meridor, the chairman of the Jewish Agency. "There is a Zionist element to it: People realize that now is the time to come and strengthen Israel. They realize that Israel needs it more than ever."
Jewish immigration from some countries -- the United States, Canada, France and Argentina, for example -- has remained strong or even increased in the last three years, according to Jewish Agency and Israeli government statistics. Migration from Argentina spiked during an economic crisis in 2002.
When it was founded as a homeland for Jews in 1948, just 672,000 Jews lived in Israel. Driven by the Holocaust and religious persecution, the Jewish population more than doubled in the next four years, with 687,624 Jews arriving between 1948 and 1951, many from Europe and neighboring Arab states.
Over the next four decades, immigration continued at a steady rate but jumped at times of war -- particularly in the mid-1950s, the late '60s and early '70s, when Jews saw Israel threatened -- and plummeted to just 9,505 new arrivals in 1985, the lowest number since Israel's founding.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel saw its largest wave of new immigrants. From 1990 through 2000, just over 1 million Jews migrated to Israel, more than 86 percent of them from the former Soviet republics.
Today, about 5.2 million Jews live in Israel, while about 4.6 million Palestinians live within Israel's borders, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the Palestinian population is growing almost three times faster than that of Jews, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, known as Passia. At current rates, and absent a new influx of Jewish immigrants, Palestinians could outnumber Jews in less than a decade, creating what some Israelis see as a demographic time bomb for their state.
Researchers Samuel Sockol, Hillary Claussen and Ian Dietch in Jerusalem and Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.