Ukraine war reignites anti-Semitism in Russia, with Jewish Agency in crosshairs

Among the many issues raised by the Ukrainian War in Russia, notably involving nationalism, another old debate has come back to life: that of anti-Semitism. One of the ways in which it took shape can be measured by the flow of Jews leaving the country and the allied dictatorship of Belarus: last year, almost 40,000 of them left for Israel, according to the Jewish Agency.

In 2021, of the 27,000 immigrants that the Middle Eastern nation received, 28% were from Russia, the largest share – and 11% from Ukraine. “There is a historical conception that whenever things go wrong in Moscow, the situation is dangerous for Jews,” says Anna Shternshis, an expert on Russian Jewish culture and professor at the University of Toronto.

Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi in the Russian capital since 1993, for example, left the country with his family two weeks after the outbreak of war. “We see the rise of anti-Semitism as Russia reverts to a new kind of Soviet Union. That’s why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in late December.

Persecutions are reported since the times of the empire. At the end of the 19th century, the murder of Tsar Aleksandr II and other crimes were falsely attributed to the Jewish community, which led to cases of revanchism and the death of Jews — also in the area of ​​present-day Ukraine. Later, in the Soviet Union, the communist regime closed synagogues, arrested Jews and denied the emigration of many of them to Israel.

With the end of the USSR, anti-Semitism receded to a certain extent, to the point that, in 2000, the then newly elected Vladimir Putin participated in celebrations of the Hanukkah holiday. Still, a recent survey by the independent Levada institute showed that only 13% of Russians say they accept a Jew in their family and 7% among their colleagues.

At the beginning of the war, almost a year ago, a series of episodes involving the Jewish religion helped to guide the conflict, resulting now in diplomatic incidents, now in means of forging geopolitical alliances – from Moscow citing the supposed “denazification” of the Ukrainian state as a justification of the invasion to Chancellor Serguei Lavrov fantasizing about a Jewish origin of Adolf Hitler to explain how a country governed by a Jew, in this case Volodymir Zelensky, could be Nazi.

In recent months, the anti-Semitic siege in Russia has turned against the Jewish Agency. Justice accused the body, which assists immigration to Israel in about 70 countries, of violating privacy laws by collecting data from citizens without the Kremlin’s authorization – the Prosecutor’s Office calls for the closure of the organization.

In December, a Moscow court postponed the hearing on the case. Two months earlier, the same had happened, with the court building having to be evacuated under threat of explosions – there is no evidence that possible intimidation was associated with the process.

Analysts consider low, however, the risk of the agency being closed soon. A US ally, Israel has maintained a certain neutrality in the conflict — even though, since its beginning, right-wing Naftali Bennett, centrist Yair Lapid and ultra-right Binyamin Netanyahu, who took office at the turn of the year and he has already spoken with both Putin and Zelensky.

Russia today has an estimated population of 150,000 Jews, but Tel Aviv counts 600,000 Russians eligible for Israeli citizenship, according to the view that considers Jewish people who convert or whose mother is a follower of the religion.

For Daniel Douek, director of the Brazil-Israel Institute, the Russian conservatism defended by the Kremlin contributes to the isolation of the community. “The rise of Judaism in modernity, as well as that of women, the LGBTQIA+ community and blacks, generates resistance from Christian traditionalism.”

According to Shternshis, most of the Jews who have left Russia and Belarus in recent months belong to the urban upper-middle class, with connections outside the country. “Some are moving to Israel, but there are others going to the US or former Soviet republics. The more money they have, the further they can go,” he says.

In Israel, a country with a higher cost of living than Russia today, journalist Olga Bakushinskaia, 56, created a group (“New arrivals, welcome”) that helps newcomers to, for example, find employment and education, renting a house and dealing with state bureaucracy.

More than 20,000 people were welcomed — among them Ukrainian Jews — by Bakushinskaia, who has already experienced this situation: she says she left Russia in 2014, feeling persecuted after the annexation of Crimea. “Israel is not the easiest country to emigrate to, but it’s the opportunity we have.”