For Israelis, Soviet Emigres Proving a Mixed Blessing

In official Israeli public relations, the arrival of thousands of Soviet immigrants is cause for joy simply because it helps fulfill one of Israel’s prime reasons for existence: to serve as a refuge for Jews fleeing oppression.

But as thousands of newcomers pour in, the beauty of the influx is strictly in the eye of the beholder. Factions in Israel differ widely as to its importance--even its desirability. And in some cases, notably politics, the Soviet Jews are viewed as a blank board on which the future of the country can be charted.

Immigration, known as the aliyah (going up), once was the uniting cord of Israeli society. But now, Israeli observers express dismay at the controversy caused by the influx of exiles.

“No one questions the idea of open immigration, but there is ambivalence,” philosopher David Hartman said recently. “We love the romance of aliyah. Israel loves the people who have not yet come here. But what about the people who live here already?”

The government has repeatedly enlarged its estimate of the number of Soviet Jews expected to emigrate in the coming years. According to the latest prediction by the Israeli press, about 750,000 will arrive by 1996. About 13,000 Soviets came last year, compared with 2,200 in 1988.

So far, the government seems unprepared for the pace of the influx. In a recently released budget, the funds set aside for immigration in 1990 were based on estimates that 40,000 newcomers will arrive--although up to 100,000 are foreseen. Where the money for the higher numbers will come from is not clear: Finance Minister Shimon Peres has called on the United States to provide it, but Washington has been talking about cutting aid to Israel, which currently totals $3 billion a year.

Some surprising instances of opposition to the Soviet Jews have arisen, mainly for reasons of economics, as poverty-stricken Israelis fear their needs will be shunted aside for the needs of the immigrants.

“Not a few young Israelis see in the potentially vast shift of resources . . . a threat to their own opportunities to make a place for themselves in Israeli society,” analyst Daniel Elazar wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

For example, the funneling of fresh funds to the immigrants set off an emotional backlash among leaders of Israel’s North African and Near Eastern communities, widely regarded as the most impoverished in Israel.

Community activist Yamin Suissa set off a storm by sending a telegram to President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev requesting that they limit the flow of Soviets to Israel.

“We are told that there is no money for education and housing--then suddenly, the government comes up with millions for aliyah. Make up your minds,” Suissa demanded. “The poor will lose out, and there will be trouble in the streets.”

Suissa complained that help from world Jewry is being diverted to the Soviets, with a net loss to development projects in Israel’s slums. In addition, he charged that the immigration would divert Israel from engaging Palestinians in peace talks.

Such complaints brought a sharp reply from Simcha Dinitz, the head of the World Zionist Organization. “Declarations that bind the figures about poverty in Israel with the efforts to absorb aliyah . . . manifest a dangerous and demagogic approach,” he declared.

Government officials, meanwhile, tried to counter Suissa’s arguments by predicting that the Soviet influx will stimulate Israel’s ailing economy, leading to more jobs and income for all. Unemployment in Israel currently stands at about 9%.

There is much conjecture about whether the Soviet newcomers, armed with an aversion to communism, will shift the balance of Israeli politics to the right and buttress the Likud Party of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

“Who needs the Soviets?” one supporter of the center-left Labor Party whispered to an interviewer. “They will all become Likudniks anyway.”

The prediction may be exaggerated: Studies of Soviet voting patterns in 1977 and 1981 revealed little difference between Soviet immigrants and society at large.

“The Labor Party seems to have fallen for the idea that the Soviets will be rightists,” said Ted Friedgud, an expert in Soviet affairs at Hebrew University. “But the opinions of the Soviets seem to be changeable, like anyone else’s.”

At the same time, concern has surfaced among religious leaders that the new wave will be markedly secular after having been cut off from religion under an officially atheistic Soviet regime and having widely married non-Jews. Religious parties had begun to make important inroads in national elections; the influx could set them back.

A rabbinical conference held recently in Tiberias suggested that special schools be set up to inculcate newcomers in Jewish law and prepare non-Jewish spouses for conversion. Some religious groups are encouraging men and boys to have ritual circumcisions as a form of reaffirming their Jewishness.

“They are certainly not forced,” Yosef Weisberg, a rabbi and national circumcision supervisor, told the Jerusalem Post. “We check their family background carefully beforehand to make sure that they are truly Jewish.”

On a smaller scale, the Soviets might provide resources to a variety of Israeli institutions:

- The large number of Soviet Jews trained in computer sciences, for example, is expected to boost Israel’s already highly developed computer industry.

- The fading kibbutz movement in Israel is offering housing and language lessons to the Soviets both as a gesture of solidarity and a means of rehabilitating its image and, perhaps, its economic outlook. The communal kibbutz farms have suffered from dwindling populations and growing debt.

“We want to be known for something other than money problems,” said Shimon Hellman, the spokesman for the United Kibbutz Movement, the largest grouping of kibbutz farms. Hellman also expressed hope that the Soviets, once they see how a kibbutz operates, will not be put off by the collective life and decide to join.

- Leaders in specially developed towns designed to disperse Israel’s population, from the dense coastal area to the hilly Galilee and desert Negev areas, also have been hoping for new residents and the funds that will follow their resettlement. But the government reports that most Soviets want to live near cosmopolitan centers like Tel Aviv. In any case, jobs are scarce in the outlying areas.

One Soviet cellist was reported to have taken a job with a small orchestra in the Negev city of Beer Sheva. His pleasure at having found a quick place to take up his skill was tempered when he was told that the orchestra is on strike because it had not been paid for months.

Palestinians, backed by their allies in the Arab world, are upset at the prospect of thousands of Soviets flowing to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians, and are campaigning to have the immigration curbed.

PLO and Arab League leaders met this week in Tunis with U.S. Ambassador Robert H. Pelletreau Jr. to discuss their concerns, sources reported Friday. The Palestinian news agency WAFA also reported the talks but did not say whether the Arabs and Pelletreau reached any agreement.

In Damascus, Syria, Soviet ambassador Alexander Zotov said the Soviet Union understands the distress of Arab governments over the projected numbers of emigrants to Israel but that Moscow cannot block Soviet citizens from settling where they wish. “Arabs should take effective and active steps against those Western nations who provide Israel with large economic, financial and military aid which constitutes the essential base for Israel to continue its expansionist and aggressive policy and ignore the demands of the international community,” he urged, in an obvious reference to the United States.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had set off the alarm bells among Arabs by recently linking the Soviet influx to the need to hold on to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the wake of broad international criticism of Shamir’s remarks, his aides have been busy attempting to modify the prime minister’s meaning. Shamir, they say, meant only that Israel has to be strong and that Soviet Jews are not being directed toward settling on the disputed land.

In Moscow, First Deputy Foreign Minister Yuli M. Vorontsov was quoted as saying: “We oppose any use of citizens leaving the Soviet Union, at great risk to them, to push Palestinians off land belonging to them.” And Israeli newspapers have conjectured that Moscow is holding up approval of direct flights to Israel from the Soviet Union in protest of Shamir’s linking of a “big aliyah “ to a “big Israel.”

Similarly, Washington has expressed displeasure at Shamir’s remarks. “Putting even more settlers in the territories is an obstacle to the cause of peace,” a State Department spokesman said this week. And officials in Washington said that the Bush Administration is monitoring the use of U.S. aid to see that none of it goes toward settling immigrants in the disputed land.