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July 25, 2003/Tamuz 25 5763, Vol. 55, No. 48
Anti-Semitism on rise in Jewish state
ARIEL FINGUERMAN AND ELANA SHAP
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Syn-agogues defaced by swastikas in B'nai Brak? Graves vandalized in Beit Shemesh? A teenager harassed for being a Jew on her way to school in Netivot?
Such cases may seem far-fetched, but they all occurred in the Jewish state. According to the Information Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel, a nongovernmental organ-ization, there have been some 500 such incidents in Israel during the past three years.
"The Russian-language newspapers in Israel print a story on an anti-Semitic incident every week, and at every police station in the country at least one anti-Semitic case is registered," says Zalman Gilichinsky, director of the information center.
It's ironic, he adds, that some victims who are immigrants from the former Soviet Union have come all the way to Israel to experience anti-Semitic aggression for the first time.
Until last month, the Israeli government virtually ignored such incidents. However, recent articles in Yediot Achronot and Ha'aretz have helped place the issue on the national agenda.
In a June 22 Cabinet meeting, Justice Minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "neo-Nazis have arrived in the country." The following day, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered an investigation into the matter.
The main focus of the investigation is a Russian-language Web site called the White Israeli Union. According to their manifesto, the site's organizers are "people who have pride in themselves and are sick of living among the dirty bastards."
Photographs on the site, which were printed in Israeli newspapers, include a destroyed Israeli flag and youngsters in Israel Defense Forces' uniforms offering Nazi-style salutes. The site identifies Jews, Arabs, immigrants from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union and foreign workers as "enemies."
Anti-Semitism also is surfacing in other Israeli venues: Arbat, a bookstore with branches across Israel, sells books imported from Moscow with titles such as "The Holocaust Myth" and "Jewish Fascism in Russia."
When Gilichinsky, 38, decided to make aliyah from the Soviet Union 15 years ago, he never imagined he would be dealing with this phenomenon in the Jewish state. Today he divides his time between teaching Judaism to new immigrants and coordinating a team of 10 other volunteers.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, describes anti-Semitic acts in Israel as an "aberration."
But his organization doesn't monitor such cases, Zuroff says.
"Anyway, this is not like anti-Semitism in other parts of the world," he says. "Here there is not a danger that they will reach power."
Gilichinsky says the perpetrators of anti-Semitism in Israel almost always are Russian-speaking youth who are not Jewish, though some are the descendants of Jews.
"They have a strong connection with Russian culture," Gilichinsky says. "Since skinheads are a trend today in Moscow, some of them have already started to be seen in Israel."
In a great majority of cases, the victims are elderly Russian Jewish immigrants.
"They are more unprotected and easily recognized by the anti-Semites," Gilichinsky says. "Israelis, on the other hand, can defend themselves and know how to go to the police, hence they are hardly attacked."
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