82% of respondents believe that in Israel they are treated not as part of Israeli society but as a separate isolated community – 'Russians'. Moreover, 54% of respondents are unhappy with this situation: they want the native population to perceive them as Israelis. Every fourth repatriate has encountered ethnic discrimination during their stay in Israel. This often happens in state institutions: the police, courts, employment services.
But the most deplorable situation is in schools. 40% of parents said that their children have encountered some form of discrimination from teachers, and 51% said that such cases also occurred from students born in Israel. Moreover, 31% of respondents reported that their children were subjected to physical violence by classmates who are native-born Israelis. The survey involved 1,025 immigrants who arrived in Israel from Russia and CIS countries from 1990 to 2005.
The status of an immigrant is always lower than that of a person born in the country. This is due to better knowledge of the language, laws, and customs of the country, and because native residents typically own property while immigrants do not. This problem exists not only in Israel, said Knesset member Marina Solodkina from the ruling party Kadima to Vremya Novostei. She noted that cases of ethnic discrimination are not only related to Russian-speaking residents of the country, and Knesset members are trying to solve this problem. Solodkina drew attention to the fact that the Russian-speaking community has not dissolved into the native population of Israel: Having changed countries, we have preserved our habits and customs, and often we call discrimination the desire of Israelis to impose their culture and rules on us.
However, prejudices in Israel exist not only at the level of ordinary employees of state institutions but also at a higher level. For example, Israeli Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter long refused to agree to cancel the visa regime with Russia due to fears that changing visa policy would allow tens of thousands of prostitutes and criminals to freely enter Israel. One of the initiators of the agreement to abolish visas was a deputy from the party Yisrael Beiteinu, Itzhak Aharonovich, who served as Minister of Tourism. It took him a lot of time to explain to Dichter that not only criminals and prostitutes live in Russia and that these categories of citizens are unlikely to be the first to rush to Israel after the visa regime is abolished.
Despite such obvious problems in Israeli society, the Jewish state continues to experience an acute need for people from the former Soviet Union. Last month, the Israeli government even held a meeting to discuss the reasons for a sharp decline in the number of Russian-speaking Jews wishing to move to the Jewish state for permanent residence. While in 2001, 34,000 people from the former USSR arrived in the country, in 2007 there were only 6,700.
For a seven-million-strong Israel, these figures could be critical. If the number of arrivals to Israel, including from Russia and CIS countries, does not increase, then within five to ten years the Jewish state will face an acute demographic crisis.