Monday, September 17, 2007

Israeli “neo-Nazis” Spur Calls for Stronger Immigration Restrictions

The presence of a “neo-Nazi” gang in Israel has caused outrage in the Israeli press and in government circles, reopening debate over Israel's "Law of Return" that grants automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.


Throughout the 1990s, Israel absorbed over 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, keen to swell the Jewish population out of fears that at some point in the future, the country's Arabs might outnumber its Jewish population.


Israeli officials now concede that more than one in four of those Soviet immigrants were not practicing Jews, and that they included thousands of non-Jews who felt no sympathy for Zionism but saw their claim on Israeli citizenship as a means of escaping the economic ravages of a collapsing Soviet empire.


The eight accused neo-Nazi gang members were all immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit on Monday ordered his staff to examine the citizenship papers of the families of the neo-Nazi gang members. "I will not hesitate to revoke their citizenship," Sheetrit said. "It is certain that this phenomenon is the embodiment of anti-Semitism at its nadir."


But the reasons why a teenager might turn against his own tribe may be more complex than a dubious bloodline or a forged ID. Israel in many ways can be a shuttered, exclusive society in which outsiders find it difficult to fit in.


Some of the Soviet immigrants adapted well to Israeli life, and are now among the country's best doctors, classical musicians, star athletes, and army commandos. But for many, the transition to Israel was jarring and disruptive.


Despite their professional credentials, they were only offered low-paying jobs as hospital cleaners and restaurant security guards, the first line of defense against a suicide bomber. Youngsters fell into gangs and crime; police say that in 2003, Russians immigrants accounted for 14% of the country's juvenile crime wave.


Led by Eli Boynatov, 19, nicknamed "Eli the Nazi", the gang vandalized synagogues near Tel Aviv, beat up Ethiopian Jews, gays, drug addicts and ultra-orthodox youth. The fact that they video-taped their savage acts proved to be their undoing. Police raided the suspects' homes and seized one tape in which "Eli the Nazi" says: "My grand-father was a half-Jewboy. I will not have children so that this trash will not be born with even a tiny percent of Jewboy blood." Such remarks chilled Israelis, who wondered how such hatred could have spread un-detected in their midst.

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