The state machine is set in motion. Just back from his diplomatic trip to Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed, on Sunday March 6 at David-Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, a first flight of Ukrainian refugees, organized by his office. It was carrying around a hundred Jewish orphans who had passed through Romania. Later that day, two more flights chartered by the Ministry of Aliyah, Jewish Immigration to Israel, took more than 200 more Ukrainians. They are notably from Odessa, a city of high Jewish culture threatened by the Russian army, whose name resounds powerfully in the Israeli imagination.
By their own means, some 2,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war have already reached Israel, according to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked. Russian-speaking groups on Facebook, usually dedicated to the resale of furniture and community support, show an impressive collective effort in favor of these newcomers. The Israeli state expects much more. According to Mme Shaked, they could be 15,000 in the month. His ministry is preparing to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian Jews, but also Russians, eligible for citizenship under the law of return of 1950. A significant wave, for a country which has approximately 15% of citizens of immigrant origin ex-USSR, and for whom the violent history of Ukraine in the XXand century is a matter of intimate memory.
Armor the doors of the synagogues
For now, signals from Russia remain limited. Last week, the Jewish Agency, which is responsible for organizing aliyah, received some 5,000 calls from Russians seeking information – barely 5% more than before the war. However, the effect of the sanctions and the ongoing transformation of their country into a pariah state should soon be felt. From Ukraine, the Jewish Agency received, during the first week of the conflict, more than 4,000 requests.
It strives to help the Ukrainian communities to protect their institutions: 2 million euros should make it possible to strengthen or shield doors and windows of synagogues, and to install surveillance cameras. Satellite phones were distributed to rabbis and community leaders. About thirty employees of the agency still work in the country, from home.
Welcoming non-Jewish refugees
The Israeli authorities are seeking to charter buses to help those who want to flee. They dispatched reinforcements to the borders and to the consulates in Poland, Moldova, Romania and Hungary. In total, some 200,000 Ukrainians are potentially eligible for Aliyah, from disparate communities with little ties to each other, based mainly in Kiev, Kharkiv and Odessa.
Beyond the fate of these communities, the reception of non-Jewish refugees is giving rise to a painful debate in Israel. On Sunday, the Minister of the Interior, Mme Shaked, estimated that nearly 10% of early arrivals were ineligible for citizenship — with no ancestry or close enough ties to the Jewish community. Dissensions are expressed within the government on the need to abandon the security deposit of 2,800 euros that the law still imposes on any Israeli who wishes to welcome a non-Jewish Ukrainian parent, by committing that he leaves after a month.
