Israel Is ‘Safe Like L.A.,’ Official Says : Settlements: Government spokesmen try to reassure potential immigrants about terrorism in the Middle East.

While visiting Israel last year, Beverlywood resident Robert Bain decided to move to Tel Aviv with his wife and four young sons this summer.

But in recent months, the ponytailed business investor has been flooded with a cascade of emotions about his decision: elation over the tentative peace accord with the Palestinians, and sorrow over acts of violence, including the massacre of 48 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque by an American Jewish settler.

So on Friday, given the opportunity to meet Ori Orr, chairman of the Knesset’s committee on foreign affairs and defense, Bain asked about terrorism in Israel.

“It’s safe like Los Angeles,” answered Orr, a retired Israeli major general.

“More safe than Los Angeles,” interrupted Mike Miller, head of the Israeli immigration office in Los Angeles.

Such answers were the order of the day as Orr, a member of the ruling Labor Party, met with reporters and several thirtysomething Los Angeles residents who plan to emigrate to Israel this year. The purpose of the visit was to persuade more Americans to move to Israel and to emphasize the positive contributions made by most American settlers, regardless of the acts of extremists such as Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Baruch Goldstein, a West Bank doctor who carried out the Hebron massacre.

“Israel is the best place to be for the quality of life and for Jewish community life,” said Orr, who arrived in Los Angeles after a tour of a McDonnell Douglas factory in St. Louis that will soon begin production of 20 F-15 fighter jets ordered by the Israeli government. “Ninety-five percent of the settlers are good people. We have problems with a small group.”

In the last decade, about 2,000 Los Angeles-area residents have settled in Israel--about a tenth of the total U.S. immigration to Israel during that period, Miller said. In comparison, Israel has taken in about 500,000 Jews from Russia and North Africa during the last four years, Orr said.

To encourage Western-style democracy in Israel, Orr said, increased immigration from the United States is critical, even if a handful turn out to be extremists. “I’d like to see a half-million Jews from the U.S. moving tomorrow. I can take the risk.”

The prospective settlers, most in their mid-30s, one wearing a yarmulke, another a Boston Red Sox cap, greeted his message with enthusiasm.

“We’re going before the mad rush once there’s peace,” said Bain, 37, who was born in Encino. “Maybe we can get an early start and establish ourselves there.”

Bain said he was concerned about such incidents as the recent terrorist attack on an elderly man in the suburb of Tel Aviv he plans to move to. Regardless, Bain said, he felt safe having his children playing outside during his visit to Israel last year.

That’s not so on the Westside, he added, where his car was stolen from his driveway and his neighbor was held up in his own driveway in recent months.

“For me, it’s not only the pull of Israel, but the push of Los Angeles. Los Angeles has been through tremendous changes in the past four or five years, especially the crime situation.” Indeed, for most prospective settlers, myriad hassles of life in Los Angeles--among them traffic, smog, crime, fires, floods and earthquakes--make even the uncertainties of life in Israel seem appealing.

“Violence happens everywhere--here too,” said engineer Jeff Greenstein, 33, referring to the murder rate in Los Angeles and the attack in New York this week, allegedly by a Lebanese immigrant, on a van packed with Jewish students of the Lubavitcher sect.

“No place is safe,” said Claremont native Carl Rosenblum, 28. “But in Israel, you have an opportunity to have an impact on a small but growing country.”