Growing anti-Semitism in France has renewed calls for Jews of the Diaspora to emigrate to Israel. Iason Athanasiadis on the Zionist version of the right to return Click to view caption The Le Pen saga may have stunned large parts of moderate Europe but it has delighted Israel's right-wing Likud government, who have used it as a plug to attract more Jewish immigrants to the troubled land. While tens of thousands took to the streets throughout France to protest against Le Pen's initial shock-success at the polls, the Israeli government turned the growing anti- Semitism to its advantage in its bid to convince Europe's affluent Jewish communities to migrate to Israel. The mounting economic and political turmoil that has afflicted the world since the 11 September attacks is being milked for all its worth by Israel and world Zionist organisations to revive Jewish emigration to the "Jewish homland". The Jewish Agency and the Israel Absorption Ministry are targeting Jewish communities in Argentina, France and South Africa as potential reservoirs of new immigrants. Yaguil Allouche, a spokesperson for the Union of Jews in France and North Africa, predicts that between 7,000 and 10,000 Francophone Jews may emigrate to Israel in the next 10 years. Last month brought a record 3,000 inquiries at the Israeli Consulate in Paris, a 500 per cent increase on March. Economic enticements are being used to win over potential immigrants. Efforts are particularly concentrated in Argentina, where a severe economic crisis has caused a drastic decline in the population's living standards. Jewish Agency Director Sallai Meridor reports that the economic situation of the Argentine Jewish community is very grave. "Twenty thousand former businessmen and professionals are reduced to accepting handouts at food kitchens," he said. "The Jewish educational system, once the best in South America, is in disarray, and we do not know how many children will return to school after the summer vacation. Everywhere there has been an upsurge in interest to immigrate to Israel." Yerachmiel Barilka, a Jewish Argentinean who immigrated to Israel 25 years ago and maintains contact with new immigrants from his former homeland, says that in addition to the Jewish Agency emissaries, representatives of cities in northern Israel have also travelled to Argentina to seek out Jews and encourage them to make the move to Israel. But official statistics issued by the Jewish Agency, the body in charge of Jewish immigration, remain dismal. Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began in September 2000, immigration to Israel has nose-dived. The ongoing suicide attacks have rattled the Israeli public and turned a diminishing flow of new arrivals into a trickle. In a country where the Arab birth-rate exceeds that of the Jews, a steady flow of new immigrants is essential if Israel is to preserve its Jewish majority. The immigration figures for 2001, therefore, are particularly discouraging for the Israeli government. Though Israel's population has grown by approximately 142,000 people and immigration from Argentina boomed by 27 per cent, only 44,000 of the total are Jewish immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union with significant numbers from Ethiopia and Argentina. Overall, immigration was down 28 per cent from 2000, the lowest figures since the late 1980s. In addition, no emigration figures have been released, despite widespread rumours that the ongoing Intifada has prompted sizeable numbers to leave. Christina Garabedian, a London-based filmmaker who was recently in Israel and the occupied territories said that, although nothing has been publicised in the Israeli media, Tel Aviv- based Jewish acquaintances have confided in her that many people are leaving the country for good. As she says, "Some secular Israelis, especially affluent younger couples, are deciding to leave Israel. House prices are falling, restaurants are empty and people live in fear." Hoping to capitalise on 11 September, the global economic downturn and the negative international reaction to Israel's West Bank campaign, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently declared: "We need to bring another million Jews here -- that needs to be a top priority of all governments. There are half a million Jews in Latin America, many of them in distress now, who need to be taken out of there... About 230,000 Jews in Argentina are in dire material straits... There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the former Soviet Union, more than 100,000 in Brazil, 150,000 in Mexico, 600,000 in France, 80,000 in South Africa, thousands in Ethiopia." "By 2020, we should gather most of the Jewish nation in the State of Israel," Sharon has said. He considers this should be "the first objective of the government... to bring another million Jews soon." Yet he admits this "may take 12 to 13 years ." A massive influx of French and Argentinean Jews would be a welcome prospect for the Israeli government. Ariel Sharon, the architect of the settlement map, and several of his Likud Party members, have harshly criticised their colleague, the former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, for failing to populate the occupied Palestinian territories with ex-Soviet Jews when they first started arriving in 1989. Should this latest push for fresh Jewish immigrants succeed, and bearing in mind the Israeli right-wing's rhetoric about transferring Palestinian populations to Jordan, it is very likely that the battle for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will reach a bloody climax. Le Pen's electoral upset has come at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian struggle had reached its nadir. France's emergence as another potential source of immigration is particularly welcome because French Jews are a prestigious demography: first world Jews have consistently preferred to assimilate in their host countries rather than emigrate. "Unfortunately, Jews from the West don't come in droves as do Jews from distressed countries," Jewish Agency spokesman Michael Jenkelowitz says. "The majority of immigrants are not coming for ideological reasons." The problem is not a new one. In 1980 the Jewish Agency said Israel faced a "national emergency" because half a million Israelis preferred to live in the United States. The issue is so entrenched that the Israelis have created a specific vocabulary. The pejorative Hebrew word "yordim" (those who go down) is used to describe Jews who emigrate from Israel, while the brightly positive "aliyah," meaning ascent, refers to immigrants. "You should not make too much of any statement Sharon makes," says Eyal Zisser, a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. He believes that every year 50,000 to 60,000 Jews come to Israel, mostly from the former USSR. "All together, this has added up to half a million in the past decade," he says. "When Jews feel insecure politically or economically, such as in Argentina or France, they look at other options and Israel is one of them. "I do not think that it is realistic to expect all of them to come to Israel, but even if a small number came -- 20,000-30,000 a year -- it still means that 200,000-300,000 will move to Israel in the next 10 years. If the Jews continue to come from the former USSR, you get almost 1,000,000 in 10 years. The government doesn't need to exert any special effort, the one million target will be reached naturally." But Zisser concludes that Sharon will continue to try to change the current drift in immigration, spurred on by the "ticking time-bomb" that he perceives the high Palestinian birth-rate to be. The contest between Jewish immigration and Palestinian fertility has become a rallying call for the Israeli right. French demographer Philippe Fargues explains that with natural population growth working to their advantage, the Palestinians will eventually become a demographic majority in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. "Nowhere else in the world are populations at the two extremes of fertility transition found side by side in such a small territory, with total fertility rates ranging from barely above the replacement level among Jews to one of the highest levels recorded in today's world among Palestinians of the Gaza Strip," Fargues says. For the time being, Jewish Agency officials are hard at work convincing Jews throughout the world that a brighter future awaits them in Israel -- however dangerous life there may be and however wretched the state of the economy. But despite the readiness of South American Jews to relocate abroad, European and US Jews remain unconvinced. According to Tanya Reinhart, a professor of linguistics and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University, Sharon and the Foreign Ministry are trying to use the Le Pen phenomenon to encourage Jews to immigrate to Israel. Most vocal is Interior Minister Eli Yisha who, Ha'aretz reported, called the heads of the Jewish community in France to express his worries about Le Pen's success. "He then urged the heads of the community to start packing their suitcases," Reinhart said. "But in the case of France, I don't think that these... appeals will have any real impact. The Ministry of the Interior still thinks that the better chances are from Argentina." Although Chirac's victory has banished the threat of Le Pen's racist policies for the while, long-term concerns may lead to an exodus of French Jews, as is now happening in South Africa. But as in South Africa -- where the Jewish community is prioritising Australia and Canada ahead of Israel -- the end destination of the French may still not be the Jewish state. So far, the French Jewish community has shown scant interest in emigrating despite rampant unemployment and the renewed wave of anti- Semitism that has recently led to 22 synagogues being attacked, a marked increase in incendiary attacks, tomb defacement, anti-Semitic graffiti and verbal and physical abuse of Jews. Sharon has set a 15 to 20-year time limit for attracting another million immigrants to Israel and creating enough settlements effectively to annex the Palestinian territories. His policy of "babies over bullets" may be the gravest threat yet to Palestinian sovereignty.
