The scenes of the arrival of Jewish refugees to the Israeli occupation state are still among the most prominent things that the Hebrew media is interested in highlighting and highlighting, as pictures and clips appear from time to time of the new immigrants on the stairs of planes waving white and blue flags and signs of victory, while red carpets were spread for them on the airport grounds in order to They pass by rejoicing to the sound of Jewish chants.

Such media scenes intensified in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Israel indicated its willingness to bring in every Jew from both Russia and Ukraine, countries home to large Jewish communities.

And in scenes with which it seemed as if history was repeating itself, a good number of Jews actually flocked, recalling the million Jews who landed in the occupied territories over the course of the nineties after fleeing the countries of the collapsed Soviet Union.

They are attributed to changing the social and economic composition of Israel, as well as bringing about a political shift in it towards the right, which today has reached the highest levels of power, paradoxically exacerbating the phenomenon of reverse immigration from Israel, as new immigrants leave their country, which has always boasted of its ability to attract and contain them.

Reverse migration.. Israel's eternal problem

At the end of 2022, the Jewish Agency, the largest global institution for Zionist activity in support of Israel, expedited the publication of data on the number of new immigrants who arrived in the occupying state thanks to its efforts, and boasted that the country received this year the largest number of immigrants in 23 years, as it arrived in the Zionist state 70,000 new immigrants, most of them from Russia and Ukraine, which is a significant increase compared to 2021, when only about 28,000 new immigrants were received.

Under the Israeli Law of Return, every Jew around the world can obtain Israeli citizenship as soon as he emigrates to Israel, but these numbers remain huge, less than the expectations of officials in the occupying country, given that there are more than 200,000 Jews in Ukraine and more than half a million in Russia who are entitled to them. immigrate under this law and are still in their home countries.

However, the problem of the occupying state is not with those Jews who wish to remain in their countries or head towards Europe or North America, but rather with what is known in Hebrew as "Jordim", which means "descent" or "descent", a term used by the Israelis to describe Jews who leave the Jewish state. having migrated to it earlier.

At a time when the Ukrainian war continues, and hundreds of Jews are arriving on flights funded by the occupation government to Israel, receiving financial assistance to help them live there, and staying in Israel hotels at state expense until they find permanent housing;

Hundreds decide to return to their hometowns, where they will still have relatives and jobs.

For example, Israeli statistics revealed that two months after the start of the Ukrainian war, about 1,800 Russian Jews out of the 5,600 who benefited from the Law of Return returned to Moscow with their Israeli passports.

This means that a third of the Russian Jews who arrived in the occupying state rushed to leave.

In the aftermath of last November's elections, which resulted in the installation of the most extremist government in Israel's history, Israelis' demand for European citizenships escalated, and the highest rate of Israelis applying for French citizenship was recorded, with an increase of 13%.

An increase was also observed in the percentage of immigration applications for European Union countries in general, as the Portuguese authorities recorded a 68% increase in citizenship applications from Israelis, and the Polish and German authorities recorded a 10% increase in the same applications over the past two months.

In any case, the departure of Jewish immigrants from Israel is not a new matter. Since the establishment of the occupying state at the end of the forties, reverse migration has been a observed phenomenon, as 10% of Jewish immigrants left between 1948-1950, which prompted the occupation government to enact strict restrictions by imposing Exit visa applications were often denied to Israeli applicants.

Despite these restrictions, 100,000 immigrants left with the tenth anniversary of the founding of the occupying state in 1958, and by 1967 more than 180,000 Israelis had immigrated, despite the continued obstacles that were placed in the way of those who wanted to immigrate by the occupation government.

The occupying state faces a double problem, an increase in the proportion of non-Jewish immigrants or non-real Jews, with the exacerbation of the phenomenon of Jewish emigration from the occupied territories, which strikes one of the solid foundations on which the occupying state was founded in murder.

(Shutterstock)

During the 1970s, fears of war, stagnation, and Palestinian-Arab resistance led to a sharp decline in immigration to Israel, to the point that the Jewish Agency closed three immigration centers in the United States. In contrast, figures issued by the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government stated that about one Soviet Jew out of All three received exit permits, quickly turned their backs on Israel and went to another country.

The reasons that prompted the Jews at that time to return to where they came from were their frustration due to security concerns, housing and economic problems in Israel, and the difficulty of integrating into the society that Israel has always claimed to be interdependent.

migration motives

In 2017, conditions in Venezuela, located in South America, were declining towards further deterioration in living conditions, with medicine and food so scarce that the poor were forced to eat from street garbage, while the country was filled with protests, rejecting the economic and political conditions.

These circumstances prompted the Jewish woman, Marlene Anichiarico Bendayan, who resides in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, to think seriously about emigration.

Her preferred destination was the United States due to the presence of her relatives there, but at this time the strict immigration policies imposed by former President Donald Trump towards Latin America prevented her wish from being fulfilled.

Therefore, Bendayan considered the Israeli occupation state an option for emigration.

Bendayan then pursued the dream of living in the occupying country, and then learned Hebrew as all immigrants do, and underwent a professional make-up course to find herself over time working as a "wedding makeup specialist" in Tel Aviv during the day, and as a waitress in a hotel at night.

And while she shared housing with a Russian woman, she soon discovered that the latter deceived her in the lease contract, as she described in an interview with the Hebrew newspaper "Haaretz", and she also complained of her suffering with the men she "date" and did not think that she was suitable as a wife, just because she is descended from From Latin America.

(AFP)

In the end, and under the weight of these circumstances, Bendayan decided to leave Israel and travel to the Mexican capital, Mexico City, where her sister resides, who helped her find a job in the field of communications and marketing, thus joining the wave of thousands who were prompted by professional and financial challenges to leave Israel, which is what It happened to hundreds of immigrants from Russia and Ukraine over the past year, who suffered from restrictions imposed by Israeli banks on new immigrants.

These restrictions were especially present with Russian immigrants who had money in Russian banks and wanted to maintain their previous standard of living, as they faced restrictions when using their credit cards (imposed by Russia on its banks to protect their balances from foreign currency), and in return they were not easily given job opportunities. In Israel, while they sought to become eligible for the Israeli welfare system, they found it difficult to find long-term housing, and they complained about military service, not to mention discrimination against Russian immigrants who were denied some of the rights their counterparts from Ukraine had.

The reasons for Jewish immigration from the Israeli interior have long varied. In the past decades, the deteriorating security situation was a major reason, especially during the uprisings of 1987 and 2000, which prompted some immigrants from the former Soviet Union to leave the occupying state for other countries.

As the Hebrew newspaper Maariv indicates, there are more than 756,000 Jews who immigrated from the occupying state until 2020 for many motives, including the deterioration of the economic situation, inequality and disappointment due to the faltering settlement with the Palestinians, in addition to the escalation of Palestinian resistance operations.

As former chairwoman of the Knesset Absorption Committee Kurt Avital said, "For the first time in the history of the conflict, the Palestinians have demonstrated to the Israelis that occupation is costly, to the extent that without sophisticated and modern weapons they have created a balance of terror for the conflict."

Israel is helpless

"After years of smuggling Jews from war zones in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine to Israel, I decided to help Israelis immigrate to the United States. It is time to offer an alternative to the Zionist movement in case things in Israel continue to deteriorate."

(Mordechai Kahane, Israeli-American businessman)

Mordechai Kahane, the American-Israeli businessman, is currently active in removing Jews from Israel. He is one of the founders of the "Let's Leave the Country Together" movement that plans to transfer thousands of Israeli Jews to the United States, which was formed in response to the arrival of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers of religious Zionism. to power recently.

On the other hand, Netanyahu's men, in turn, soon began their serious talk about the need to work to change the Israeli immigration policy even before they officially came to power in order to tighten the procedures required for obtaining citizenship, so that it does not become easy to obtain so that its owners leave easily after holding passports.

Therefore, Netanyahu's allies demanded radical amendments to the "Law of Return" and reopening the issue of defining "Jew" under the pretext of "preserving Israel as a Jewish state."

Apparently, the so-called "Jewish Return Law" that was approved in 1950, and guaranteed the immigration of anyone who is able to prove the existence of at least one Jewish grandfather to the occupied territories;

From the point of view of religious Zionism, it has now become a problem threatening Israel, and "the pope is being used absurdly to bring pagans into the State of Israel, to systematically reduce the proportion of Jews in the country," said Avi Maoz, head of the ultra-nationalist Noam Party.

This problem emerged clearly for the first time after the immigration of more than a million Soviets to Israel in the 1990s, some of whom are still de facto Orthodox Christians, which means that proving the existence of a Jewish grandfather was a legal argument for leaving Russia to a country of easy nationality, without being the owner of The request to immigrate is necessarily Jewish.

The religious Zionist attack on the existing immigration policy comes at a time when the numbers of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reveal the exacerbation of the phenomenon of “unreal Jews” immigration to the occupying state, as the data indicates that 72% of those who immigrated to Israel are from the countries of the former Soviet Union under the “Law of Return.” In 2020 they were not Jews, while among the 180,000 immigrants who have arrived in Israel since 2012, there are only 25,375 Jews (about 14% of the total immigrants).

In general, the percentage of real Jews who immigrated to Israel under the "Law of Return" declined steadily from 93% in 1990 to 28% in 2020.

It is not surprising that the reverse immigration from Israel raises concerns among the Israeli leadership, which is now facing a number of internal and external challenges in conjunction with the arrival of religious Zionists to power.

(Getty Images)

The occupying state faces a double problem, then, an increase in the proportion of non-Jewish immigrants or non-real Jews, with the exacerbation of the phenomenon of Jewish emigration from the occupied lands, which strikes one of the solid foundations on which the occupying state was founded in murder.

Throughout their history, the Zionists believed in immigration to Palestine as a major goal of the Jewish national movement, which considers the influx of Jews vital to the survival of their state and the strengthening of its demographic, economic and military strength.

In light of this, it is not surprising that the reverse emigration from Israel raises concerns among the Israeli leadership, which is now facing a number of internal and external challenges, in conjunction with the arrival of religious Zionists to power.

The list of fears includes the demographic threat from the increasing number of Palestinians, the shrinking number of Jews joining the ranks of the occupation army, and most importantly, perhaps normalization with the "Yordem" phenomenon itself as a fait accompli that may lead to more military migrations in the future.

This occurs at a time when Israeli projections indicate that there will likely be low immigration from the Jewish communities in the diaspora for the foreseeable future, as Israel is now no longer the country of immigration that it was in the first five decades of its history.

It seems that the Israeli government, which announced its intention to work to change the passport law in order to make it more difficult to obtain an Israeli passport, and then discourage new immigrants from obtaining it quickly and then leaving the country;

It will cause an increase in the alienation of immigrants.

As former Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, whose supporters are trying to reinstate him in Netanyahu's government after he left it in the wake of the lawsuits against him, suggests: "We should give status and a passport only to those who settle in Israel, not to those who aspire to obtain benefits they are not entitled to.