The autocrats who send Jews fleeing
Trends in aliyah, the immigration of Jews to Israel, can sound the alarm about rising anti-Semitism — and this year we’ve seen the unnervingly obvious truth that Jews aren’t feeling comfortable living under the autocracies in Russia and Turkey.
In the first nine months of the year, more than double the number of Turkish Jews decided to move to Israel compared to the same period in 2016.
The Jewish Agency for Israel also reported that the influx of Russian Jews was up, even as immigration from France — where Jews have weathered often violent anti-Semitism — plunged 26%. Ukraine, economically pounded since Russia’s 2014 invasion, was also the source of thousands of immigrants under the Law of Return.
It’s incumbent upon the world to pay close attention to why they’re leaving.
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip has largely left the public anti-Semitism up to his henchmen, with pro-regime media touting rumors that enemies of the president must have Jewish blood or breathlessly warning that an independent Kurdish state would welcome a flood of more than 200,000 Jews. Not that Erdogan has stayed out of the mud, considering the time he accused the Jewish state of “keeping Hitler’s spirit alive.”
But ever since the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with the caveat that it wasn’t a final status determination, Erdogan has let his inner anti-Semite rip, declaring recognition of Jerusalem a “red line” for Muslims, riling up “the entire Islamic world in motion” against the Jewish state and branding Israel a “terror state.” The henchmen have carried their water, too, with pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak running a column declaring that “Jews are intellectually the most dangerous human community” and “follow a racist, hegemonic and false theology” that “they must abandon . . . in order to transform into a nondangerous people.”
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin this summer claimed his persecution over Kremlin interference in the U.S. presidential election just “reminds me of antiSemitism and blaming the Jews.” The rabbi of Sochi, Arya Edelkopf, was deported as a “threat to national Erdogan security” in January; the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report said that was likely over a land dispute to build a synagogue. Anti-Semitism takes on royal tones, as well: Last month, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia protested statements at a Moscow conference buying into the “shocking expression of an antiSemitic myth” that the 1917 killing of Czar Nicholas II was a ritual Jewish murder.
Add that to nearly a third of the Russian population harboring anti-Semitic attitudes, according to the Anti-Defamation League index, along with anti-Semitic movements like the Russian National Unity party, overall crackdowns in freedom and economic woes, and it’s looking like time to head for the exits.
Israel represents such a haven for persecuted Jewish communities that they’re willing to risk living with the violence directed at the Jewish state in return for true freedom. If it isn’t international entities trying to economically ruin Israel through the BDS blacklist of Jewish entities, then it’s rockets from Gaza or knife-wielding assailants from the West Bank indiscriminately gunning for the lives of Israeli civilians. The past few weeks of terror groups vowing to come for al-Aqsa and wipe out the Jews “to the sea,” in the everlasting Hamas pledge, only adds to the cornucopia of threats Israel fends off on a daily basis.
Even with this threat that could be around any corner in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Ashkelon, endangered Jews are coming to Israel for security. That’s both a testament to the enduring power of the Jewish state and a shameful indictment of Russia and Turkey, as well as the global community that would rather sling a few more resolutions condemning Israel than confront the growing scourge of anti-Semitism.
Ultimately, persecuted Jews know the difference between a country that vows “never again” in word and deed versus entities that have bumped the post-World War II pledge far too low on their priority list.