Haaretz
Adar 7, 5767
Haaretz has
uncovered Internet sites put up by Israelis in their 30s who immigrated
from the CIS that supply Nazi and Russian nationalist content.
In
2003 a Web site operated by Ilia Zolotov, an Israel Defense Forces soldier
who called himself a "Russian patriot," was exposed. The Web site, whose
name translates to the White Israeli Union, was housed on an Israeli
server. Its content included Nazi and Holocaust-denial materials. It was
eventually closed down by the police. Zolotov was sentenced to community
service and sent on a tour of death camps in Poland.
Since the
closure of Zolotov's Web site, his successors have gotten more
sophisticated. Now they use servers based abroad, usually in Russia, to
evade the authorities. One such site operator is Alex [a pseudonym], who
is in his 30s and holds a security-related job. His site,
www.rusnatcentre.tk, is hosted by a Russian server. Alex refers to himself
on the site as "the Russian tank operator" or "the fighter from
Jerusalem," a tribute to his service in the Armored Corps. In a
conversation with Haaretz, he denied that his site carries anti-Semitic
messages, asserting that it is pro-Russian only.
"The Russian
National Center is a Russian nationalist association that lives in
Israel," Alex explains. "The main mission of our organization is
nationalist propaganda among ethnic Russians residing in Israel,
encouraging their return to Russia, opposing the return of Jews from
Israel to Russia, and opposing conversion to Judaism," Alex said. He will
not reveal membership figures, saying only it is a "global organization
whose members are adults, most of them after army service and the majority
living in the center of the country."
A Haaretz probe reveals that
the RNC site is indeed Russian nationalist in nature, but it also contains
anti-Semitic material. The home page features a Celtic cross, a symbol
that has been adopted by neo-Nazis, and warns all Jews who have immigrated
to Israel not to dare to return to Russia. It calls on all non-Jewish
Russians who immigrated to Israel to return to Russia and to leave the
Jews [using the derogatory Russian term zhid] in their country.
Alex is active on other, specifically Nazi, forums, such as
www.slavnazi.com, in which he recommended Jurgen Graf's "The Myth of the
Holocaust" to readers in July 2005. There were 118 favorable responses
from Israel to that posting.
Alex also regularly recommends films
and music in Russian with Nazi content. One of his recommendations in the
latter category is Kolovrat, which is known as a Nazi band. About a year
ago the band members were arrested and banned for distributing Nazi
propaganda when they traveled to the Czech Republic on a concert tour.
Alex's site asks readers to sign a petition calling for the group's
release, which has garnered about 150 signatures from Israeli Internet
users.
Alex gets mad when he is asked whether the call to release
Kolovrat is anti-Semitic. "Of course such an action won't please the Jews,
like any other action on the part of Russian nationalist!" Alex says.
When asked whether the mass Jewish immigration of Russian Jews in
the 1990s was a mistake, he says it depends which immigrants you mean.
"The Jewish immigration to Israel is the best and only solution,
apparently, to the Jewish question in Russia. On the other hand, the mass
emigration of ethnic Russians from Russia is a big mistake that we [the
RNC] must correct."
Dr. Elana Gomel, chair of the English
Department at Tel Aviv University and author of "Atem ve'anachnu" ("You
and Us"), a book on being Russian in Israel, agrees that there is
anti-Semitism in Israel. "After the collapse of Communism," she says,
"states that were part of the Soviet Union licked their wounds and looked
for ways to make up for the downfall, and it came in the form of
reinforcing their nationalism. The vacuum left by Communism was filled by
fascism and Nazism," Gomel says.
"Their message is, 'if I'm not
accepted here as a Jew, then I'll remain Russian,'" Gomel said. "The
enormous gap in mentality between the cultures of the Sabras and the
immigrants doesn't help their absorption into society and they develop
antagonism to Israeli society. The absurdity," Gomel adds, "is that even
if the anti-Semitic nationalists return to Russia, the Russian
anti-Semites won't accept them and will persecute them just as people of
Jewish extraction in the Wehrmacht during the Nazi regime were persecuted.
The phenomenon is sick because it is a form of self-flagellation that
cannot be stopped," Gomel said.
Vandalism as an expression of
anti-Semitism in Israel
Six minors, immigrants from the CIS, were
arrested early this year on suspicion of burning flags and stealing
mezuzahs from Nahshonim School in Bat Yam. They also confessed to stealing
mezuzahs from homes in the city on eight additional occasions. The teens
attributed their actions to a hatred for Jews and Judaism. In the past
three months, there have been five break-ins at synagogues in the southern
city of Arad. All of the incidents have involved vandalism, the theft of
charity boxes and the scrawling of obscenities on the walls.
In
the past several years there have been similar incidents carried out by
young immigrants from the CIS, including the desecration of Jewish
cemeteries, throughout the country. Many religious institutions have
instituted security measures as a result. In 2006 there were at least six
reports of broken headstones, desecration of synagogues and graffiti with
swastikas and anti-Semitic sentiments, according to figures gathered by
Damir, an organization that assists victims of anti-Semitism.
Hitler youth
Irina, 18, lives in central Israel. She
belonged to a group of young people, "Nazi skinheads," that terrorized the
ultra-Orthodox residents of a central-Israel city. "I was a 'skin girl,'"
relates Irina, whose was the girlfriend of the group's leader, Leonid [a
pseudonym - M.K.]. Leonid, who is now about 19, immigrated at age 10 from
Azerbaijan on the Law of Return. The only Jew in his family was one of his
grandfathers.
Irina says that Leonid's downslide began in the
ninth grade. He felt alienated from Israeli society and decided to join up
with a Nazi skinhead group. "We were a bunch of Russian new immigrants,
boys and girls," Irina relates. "Most of the boys had shaved heads and
wore army pants."
A group of about 15 teens who believed in the
Nazi ideology coalesced around Leonid. One of their favorite activities,
Irina says, was attacking Haredi. "Nazi skinheads hate the religious,
especially Haredim, for them the Haredim are the ugly Jews ... On weekends
we'd meet in the parks, drinking and smoking and listening to Nazi music,"
and then they would go out in search of dossim [a derogatory Hebrew term
for religious Jews], Irina related. "On Hitler's birthday we'd met at a
cemetery and celebrate," she said.