The call for Israeli youth to move to the German capital because of low prices and other benefits caused indignation among officials.
The modest internet portal "Olim le-Berlin" ("Repatriating to Berlin") seriously stirred up Israeli society. Local media, as if on command, began to discuss this delicate topic in unison. And then the "sausage aliyah" from the USSR of 20 years ago was recalled, accusations of selfishness and outrageous ingratitude for "bread and shelter" in the historical homeland were heard. As usual, there was no escaping the "spy conspiracy" and the machinations of anti-Semites seeking to destroy the Jewish state.
Most of all, former Director General of the Ministry of Finance Doron Cohen railed, accusing the authors of the publication of malicious slander against Israel. The state official even made a statement that agitating for leaving Israel for Germany is "the biggest baseness in the world", without saying a word about the high cost of living in the country, which sparked social protests last year. He should recall that the tents on Rothschild Boulevard in the center of Tel Aviv also appeared after an online call to boycott the dairy product "cottage" due to its inflated price, and how difficult it was for the Israeli authorities to quell this popular uprising.
The public's favorite - former TV idol, now Minister of Finance Yair Lapid acted more simply. He decided to block the site "Olim le-Berlin", thereby depriving them of the opportunity to leave comments on his official Facebook page, which, however, did not escape the attention of Israelis.
Why did a receipt from a Berlin store make such an impression? After all, Israelis are not behind an "iron curtain", but travel freely around the world, and could have seen for themselves the discrepancy in prices for domestically produced goods at home and abroad. Of course, they noticed and more than once asked themselves – how can, for example, orange juice from Israeli plantations on the shelves of European supermarkets cost half as much?
And there was no need for an Israeli living in Berlin to appeal to his compatriots with a call to "flee while there's still time". However, in Israel it is not customary to complain about one's state; most Israelis are still patriots of their country, but they are not averse to discussing it, so to speak, "behind its back".
What can we say, social networks in our progressive age play the role of a lightning rod. "That's it, I'm fed up, there's no point in sitting and crying in tents on Rothschild Boulevard. I love Israel, but life in the Jewish state is affordable only for very rich people," the author boldly summarizes.
According to him, to buy a "shabby" apartment in a peripheral area of Israel, you need to work at least 45 years. Land in Israel is expensive, so high-rises in the center of the country stretch to the clouds, and there's nowhere to expand... We agree that the "housing issue" in our Palestine is indeed very acute. It has "spoiled" not only ordinary Israelis, it has become a "stumbling block" even on the political arena.
The construction of new settlements in the territories, which the Palestinians protest, could to some extent solve this problem, but it causes outrage in international circles. It is no coincidence that the discussion of this painful topic turned into a mass online debate. Many wrote that they would never trade the Jewish state for cheap "Milky", nevertheless the clear evidence of Israeli high prices left no one indifferent.
However, let's move away from material issues, which citizens of all countries face to some degree. An even greater resonance in Israel was caused by an article published the other day in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), which claims that "tens of thousands" of Israelis are fleeing to Germany in search of asylum allegedly because of disagreement with government policy. The author of the publication, Torsten Schmitz, a former correspondent of the newspaper in Israel, draws a parallel with the Jews who fled Nazi Germany. If the documents of the Nazi era featured the slogan "Jews to Palestine!", then in the sense of the article it can be paraphrased as "Jews out of Palestine!".
"This seems to me a deliberate distortion of reality to minimize or even remove guilt for the Holocaust. There are many reasons why Israelis might move to Berlin for temporary or permanent residence. But to assume that Israelis are fleeing Israel due to a policy crisis is not confirmed by any data," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Mr. Schmitz's assertion is refuted by ordinary statistics. According to information received from the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, between 2011 and 2013 a total of 84 Israeli citizens were registered who claimed refugee status. In particular, as of the end of August 2014, only 20 applications had been submitted. Moreover, according to the documents, most of the requests came from Israeli Arabs.
However, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the online battles are gradually subsiding. Israelis need neither "Milky", nor the German shore, nor cheap housing. The people are moving into huts, without luxury under the open sky it is somehow calmer...
Sveta BLAUS.
"Russkaya Germania"