The Right but not the Desire to Return
Russia and Israel have a rather interesting relationship. Political relations between the countries have been cool for decades, but the increase of Russian immigration and travel to the Jewish nation has inevitably complicated the two nation’s cultural and social ties. It’s estimated that well over a million Russians have immigrated to Israel since the collapse of Communism. The reasons have been economic and cultural. Many Russian Jews fled the collapsing economy of the 1990s. Some were pulled to Israel out of Zionist dreams. Fewer left Russia out of fear of antisemitism. Many more were pulled by Israeli policies that expanded the Right of Return, a move from the Israeli perspective was a means to offset the its demographic imbalance with the Palestinians as well as replace Arab cheap labor with Russian immigrant cheap labor.
However, the Russian diaspora in Israel has increasingly found it difficult to integrate into Israeli society. They ..read more
