A friend of mine who served in the Israeli army has a story he likes to tell about his service there, and what it portends for the future of the country. One day, my friend’s unit commander comes by with a box of candy bars. He asks my friend, a recent immigrant to Israel from Canada, to pass them out to the unit and to make sure everyone gets one. As my friend is passing out the candy bars, a recent Russian immigrant in his unit grabs the box and says, “rak rusim,” or “only for Russians.”
My friend told this story in the context of explaining that there are essentially two kinds of Russians. The first kind is thoughtful, lyrical, and deeply cerebral; the brilliant chess-playing scientist. The second kind of Russian is atavistic, brutal, and cruel; the sadistic general in Rambo III. Today in Israel, there are about a million Russian immigrants in a country of 7.6 million, most of whom I can charitably characterize as “more from column two than column one.”
Most people, when they speak of the destructive forces of demographic change in the Jewish state, are referring to the high birthrates among the nation’s Arabs. But the demographic changes within the Jewish population itself are far more worrying to me. You can cut a deal with outsiders. You can work them into society, or let them have their own. But you can’t cut a deal with your own people. If they’re the majority, they just take over.
Avigdor Lieberman, the ambitious pugnacious foreign minister under the Netanyahu government, is also the head of the Israel Beitenu party, which means “Israel, Our Home.” Israel Beitenu’s membership is mostly composed of recent immigrants, mostly from the Former Soviet Union, many of whom have little or no natural affiliation with the somewhat parochial concepts of Judaism and Zionism; concepts that sit at the core of the Jewish State. Fair enough, but the more global concepts of Democracy and Human Rights so often seems missing as well. Lieberman, himself a former club bouncer and immigrant from Moldova, serves in a coalition government, but has no loyalty to anyone but his immediate tribe. He has roundly rejected any and all overtures towards peace, and openly mocked his own government in doing so. He is the classic dictatorial thug and his constituency is growing faster than any other in Israel.
Lieberman and the Russian influx is one of several growing demographics who do not share my values towards Israel, the Middle East, or Humanity as a whole. Ultra-religious groups are flourishing. Shas, the party of religious mizrahim (“Easterners”); Jews hailing from the Middle East, has carried all of the autocratic instincts and backwater fundamentalism with them from their native homes. Were it not for being Jewish, Shas might sit comfortably amongst the sectarian squabbles so often found in Iraq’s tenuous coalition governments, supporting militia cult leaders similar to Muqtada al Sadr, and declaring all outsiders apostate, as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef did when he said, “Gentiles were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”
The old imagery from Exodus, with its brave departures from the horrors of Nazi Europe is fading fast in the relentless sunshine of the desert. Israel’s founding ideals of pluralism, social justice, and a mostly agnostic, pragmatic state are retreating behind concrete military barriers. The Kibbutz, with its quaint notions of egalitarianism, shared responsibility, and deep community, is eroding into more and more settlement blocs. Zealotry and expansionism is the order of the day, even as the immediate existential threat of war with Israel’s neighbors pales in comparison to the longer-term threat of demographic overrun by Jews and non-Jews alike.
Israel is not what it once was, but what can I do about it? Can I fall in with the remaining secular democrats? Is this really the Israeli Alamo for people who are human first and Jewish second? What will Israel look like in twenty years? I don’t know, but when I look at the numbers, and compare them to what I’m seeing, the trends, both cultural and demographic, don’t look like something I want to be a part of. Someone, tell me why I’m wrong. Please.
