Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday that Russia’s decision to close the main agency responsible for Jewish immigration to Israel would be a “major event” that would seriously affect relations between the two countries.
Last week, Russia’s Ministry of Justice called for the “disbandment” of the Jewish Agency in Russia, saying it violated several vague laws.
Israel sees this move as a warning to newly elected Lapid’s outspoken support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia.
“The closure of the offices of the Jewish Agency will be a major event that will affect communication,” Lapid told senior officials on Sunday, according to a statement from his office.
The minister also ordered that a legal delegation be sent to Moscow to discuss the move.
“Prime Minister Lapid said at the meeting that relations with Russia are important for Israel. The Jewish community in Russia is large and important, and this increases with every diplomatic meeting with the administration in Moscow.”
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the Moscow court.
Passengers disembark from a plane carrying Jewish immigrants fleeing the war in Ukraine upon arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, on March 6, 2022. (MENACHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images )
“Russian Jews will not be hostage in the war in Ukraine,” said Nachman Shai, Minister of the Israeli Diaspora. “Israel’s attempt to punish the Jewish Agency for its position in the war is upsetting and humiliating.”
Meanwhile, the former head of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky, urged Russian Jews to leave the country as soon as possible and emigrate to Israel.
“Russia, isolated from the free world in recent days and weeks, has strengthened its military-political alliance with Iran and Syria. At the same time, steps were taken to end the activities of the Jewish Agency on its territory, the central agency that connects Israel and Diaspora Jews,” he said.
Israelis must “protect our interests in a way that will not abandon our moral positions, insist on defending them, and join the free world’s struggle to stop Russian aggression.”
Sharansky, who spent ten years in prison in the Soviet Union for his human rights work, urged Russian Jews not to delay their plans to emigrate to Israel.
On August 20, 1991, File/Soviet Jews on the El Al plane with immigrants from Moscow landed at Ben Gurion Airport. A large number of immigrants from the Soviet Union increased Israel’s population by about 10% for 3 years (1989-92). (via Getty Images by SVEN NAKSTRAND/AFP)
“We must remember that Israel knows how to fight for immigration even when the Jewish Agency and all Israeli diplomats are banned from Soviet Russia, just as it knows how to successfully defend its security interests even when all the best Soviet weapons are handed over, not to us, but to our enemies,” he said. .
Established in 1948, twenty years before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency helped nearly one million Russian Jews immigrate to Israel in the years before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Israel, an ally of both Russia and Ukraine, hesitates to take sides in a war. Russia has a strong military presence in Syria and controls the skies, so Jerusalem coordinates all military attacks against Iranian targets in Syria with Moscow. However, as Foreign Minister, Lapid has always taken a tougher stance towards Russia than his predecessor, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Source: Breitbart
