IMMIGRATION : Call to Limit Russian Jews in Israel Hits Discordant Note

JERUSALEM —  To a Jewish ear, the very word selection was chilling, immediately recalling the brutal scenes in which Nazi officers picked and chose among inmates of World War II death camps, deciding who would live and who would die.

But this was Ora Namir, Israel’s minister of labor and social affairs, urging her country to be “more selective” in admitting Jewish immigrants from Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union.

Elderly Jews were being sent by the thousands to Israel, where the state would care for them while their children left for America, Namir complained. Single mothers, unable to support themselves in Russia’s collapsing economy, now constituted, with their children, a third of Israel’s immigrants. Also flooding in were the “disabled with severe problems.”

“I am very uneasy about aliya (immigration) from the Commonwealth of Independent States over the past year and a half,” Namir said, suggesting that the flow--an average of 5,000 a month now--be curtailed for both financial and social reasons and that visa applicants be screened closely.

Namir’s call for “selective aliya “ flew in the face of Israel’s “Law of Return,” which guarantees the right of every Jew in the world to settle here.

Although she did not spell out her criteria for limiting immigration, Namir apparently would send immigration officials abroad to exclude those not deemed fit or able to function and support themselves in Israeli society.

“If the entire families were to come, I’d not say a word,” she said of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. “But the children send their elderly and disabled parents here so that the state can spend its resources on them, and the (welfare system) cannot cope. The younger people thus get rid of the need to take care of them and can go live in America.”

Describing Jews arriving from Russia as “people who have learned to exploit what they can from the state,” Namir continued: “They know there is no other country like Israel,” where immigrants are entitled to extensive aid, including unemployment benefits, resettlement allowances and full health care immediately on arrival. “Of course, they come.”

Namir’s comments, made in newspaper and radio interviews and repeated in Parliament this week, set off a political and social debate that enveloped Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government.

“This is the end of Zionism,” declared Natan Sharansky, a veteran campaigner for emigration from the Soviet Union and the head now of the largest Russian immigrant group. “Is there a place in Israel only for those who could make it through Dachau or Buchenwald? We thought that there was an Israel precisely, but not only, so there should be no more Jewish victims. Now, are we to choose the victims ourselves?”

Rabin quickly dissociated himself from Namir’s comments. “ Aliya is the soul, the raison d’etre of the state,” he said. “There is no such thing as ‘selective aliya, ‘ and God help us if we get to that.”

Immigration Minister Yair Tsaban said Namir had gotten her facts wrong. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were older than 65 were 15.5% of the total, not, as Namir had claimed, more than 30%. Single-parent families were about 10%. Overall, Israel’s welfare system paid out 12% of its budget to immigrants, who made up 11% of the population.

Rehavam Zeevi, a member of Parliament from the ultra-right Homeland Party, said of immigrants: “If they are Jewish, their place is in Israel. And, if the young ones aren’t coming, perhaps that’s our fault.”

Benny Temkin, a member of Parliament from the leftist Meretz Party, said, “Nobody has the right to say who can come and who can’t, because we are talking about the return of people to their historic homeland.”

But Namir, who remains unchastened, appeared to have struck a populist nerve.

When Army Radio asked, “Do you support Ora Namir’s remarks?” 1,280 of the 1,510 who phoned in said yes. However, a more scientific opinion poll for a Tel Aviv newspaper found that people were almost evenly divided.