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Local media reports about a Tel Aviv synagogue recently smeared with swastikas and vandalized prayer books have raised the specter of a homespun, Israeli neo-Nazi movement. The local Haredi (ultra orthodox) Jewish community is stunned and claims that in 2005 alone, some 100 anti-Semitic incidents were monitored around the country, including harassment, knifings, assaults and the mugging of Yeshivah students by youth gangs of Russian-speaking skinheads and punks.
But police authorities and adolescent welfare organizations are skeptical. These are fringe acts, they say, by angry and alienated non-Jewish immigrant youth from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), who blame the Jews who brought them to Israel for all their troubles.
Some 83,000 immigrant teenagers without legal and civic status reside in Israel, according to Interior Ministry statistics from 2004. The Council for Child Welfare puts the number at 93,000 today. They are part of the mass immigration of more than 1 million from the FSU during the past 13 years.
These kids are fourth generation children of Jewish fathers or the accompanying offspring of non-Jewish mothers of previous mixed marriages and by definition are not eligible for Israeli nationality and immigrant rights under Israel's Law of Return. Consequently, they cannot register for state schooling and are not entitled to state medical insurance.
In numerous instances, they become social outcasts, abandoned to the streets by low-income parents who did not ask whether they wanted to come and cannot cope with their own acculturation. In addition, they are rejected by their Jewish immigrant compatriots from the FSU, says Eli Zarkhin, director of The Israel Association for Immigrant Children (IAIC). "Today, the marginally alienated vent their anger at Israeli society by indiscriminately hitting out at ultra-orthodox Jews because of their visibly strange dress."
The delinquent street gangs drunkenly loiter at night in parks in Israeli cities and towns, violently assaulting random ultra-orthodox Jews. They are a subgroup of what Israeli welfare authorities define as "Youth at Risk" (unemployed school dropouts on the edge of crime) experiencing a critical cultural identity crisis.
"They are not neo-Nazis. They do not know properly how to draw a swastika or the meaning of white supremacist ideologies. But they are strongly influenced by them because they form the cultural baggage of racist Russian nationalist cults disseminated on dozens of Russian Internet sites," says Zarkhin. "If this social problem is not dealt with, it will explode in our faces. The state of Israel allowed them to enter the country legally with their parents as part of a Jewish immigrant family and it has a responsibility take care of them."
Ten percent of the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva's 35,000 resident immigrants from the FSU comprise adolescents aged between 10 and 19. They don't even have one cultural center, compared with the 300 synagogues serving the city's 5,000 Haredi Jewish residents, adds Zarkhin.
Municipal youth counselors in the field are disturbed by the growing phenomenon. "In Israel, [Jewish] identity and nationality are inseparable. These adolescents are joining a problematic society whose tensions grow acute year by year as new immigrant youth from problematic backgrounds arrive in Israel also with criminal records in the FSU," says Nurit Tibi, who directs the municipality's multi-disciplinary center for 100 immigrant youth in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva. The center offers special youth counseling, Hebrew language, Jewish identity and Israel studies enrichment programs. "Their links to Judaism are very tenuous and their anti-social behavior stems from extreme frustration."
The countrywide picture is bleak. After 13 years, the Israeli statewide psychological services for Youth at Risk employ 64 counselors catering to a mere 1,280 FSU youngsters aged between 14 and 18, says national coordinator Dr. Lena Goldsman. "For many, a personal crisis (low-income and single-parent families, divorce, crime, and child abuse) compounds their cultural-identity crisis.
The counselors treat only high-risk immigrant youngsters with Israeli citizenship who have been referred to them by police, juvenile courts, schools, and community leaders. Far fringe, non-Jewish youngsters lacking civic status remain outside the pale.
Whether citizens or non-citizens, immigrant youth at risk are deeply confused about the Israeli or Russian culture to which they belong, says Goldsman. "The home environment reinforces Russian culture and the ethnic values in the former Soviet republics from which they emigrated. These clash with the surrounding multicultural Jewish values. They don't see themselves as belonging to Israeli society and they react in a typically Russian way... We have to work and invest in them and avoid panic."
Despite a growing social awareness among the professionals and in the Israeli media of its negative dimensions, comprehensive government action is lacking among the various ministries and voluntary immigrant assistance agencies.
The same is true at the legislative level. Last year, five Knesset parliamentary subcommittees held five separate hearings on the subject of Youth at Risk and the social implications of unemployed school dropouts. Four sessions were related to immigrant absorption and the fifth to children's rights in Israel. None dealt exclusively with the problems of alienated juvenile immigrant youths, including the Russian sectarian party Israel Beiteinu, which now has 13 Knesset seats following the March ballot.
Fresh hope exists that once the Knesset subcommittees are staffed, concerted parliamentary action will be taken on the matter.
But police authorities and adolescent welfare organizations are skeptical. These are fringe acts, they say, by angry and alienated non-Jewish immigrant youth from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), who blame the Jews who brought them to Israel for all their troubles.
Some 83,000 immigrant teenagers without legal and civic status reside in Israel, according to Interior Ministry statistics from 2004. The Council for Child Welfare puts the number at 93,000 today. They are part of the mass immigration of more than 1 million from the FSU during the past 13 years.
These kids are fourth generation children of Jewish fathers or the accompanying offspring of non-Jewish mothers of previous mixed marriages and by definition are not eligible for Israeli nationality and immigrant rights under Israel's Law of Return. Consequently, they cannot register for state schooling and are not entitled to state medical insurance.
In numerous instances, they become social outcasts, abandoned to the streets by low-income parents who did not ask whether they wanted to come and cannot cope with their own acculturation. In addition, they are rejected by their Jewish immigrant compatriots from the FSU, says Eli Zarkhin, director of The Israel Association for Immigrant Children (IAIC). "Today, the marginally alienated vent their anger at Israeli society by indiscriminately hitting out at ultra-orthodox Jews because of their visibly strange dress."
The delinquent street gangs drunkenly loiter at night in parks in Israeli cities and towns, violently assaulting random ultra-orthodox Jews. They are a subgroup of what Israeli welfare authorities define as "Youth at Risk" (unemployed school dropouts on the edge of crime) experiencing a critical cultural identity crisis.
"They are not neo-Nazis. They do not know properly how to draw a swastika or the meaning of white supremacist ideologies. But they are strongly influenced by them because they form the cultural baggage of racist Russian nationalist cults disseminated on dozens of Russian Internet sites," says Zarkhin. "If this social problem is not dealt with, it will explode in our faces. The state of Israel allowed them to enter the country legally with their parents as part of a Jewish immigrant family and it has a responsibility take care of them."
Ten percent of the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva's 35,000 resident immigrants from the FSU comprise adolescents aged between 10 and 19. They don't even have one cultural center, compared with the 300 synagogues serving the city's 5,000 Haredi Jewish residents, adds Zarkhin.
Municipal youth counselors in the field are disturbed by the growing phenomenon. "In Israel, [Jewish] identity and nationality are inseparable. These adolescents are joining a problematic society whose tensions grow acute year by year as new immigrant youth from problematic backgrounds arrive in Israel also with criminal records in the FSU," says Nurit Tibi, who directs the municipality's multi-disciplinary center for 100 immigrant youth in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva. The center offers special youth counseling, Hebrew language, Jewish identity and Israel studies enrichment programs. "Their links to Judaism are very tenuous and their anti-social behavior stems from extreme frustration."
The countrywide picture is bleak. After 13 years, the Israeli statewide psychological services for Youth at Risk employ 64 counselors catering to a mere 1,280 FSU youngsters aged between 14 and 18, says national coordinator Dr. Lena Goldsman. "For many, a personal crisis (low-income and single-parent families, divorce, crime, and child abuse) compounds their cultural-identity crisis.
The counselors treat only high-risk immigrant youngsters with Israeli citizenship who have been referred to them by police, juvenile courts, schools, and community leaders. Far fringe, non-Jewish youngsters lacking civic status remain outside the pale.
Whether citizens or non-citizens, immigrant youth at risk are deeply confused about the Israeli or Russian culture to which they belong, says Goldsman. "The home environment reinforces Russian culture and the ethnic values in the former Soviet republics from which they emigrated. These clash with the surrounding multicultural Jewish values. They don't see themselves as belonging to Israeli society and they react in a typically Russian way... We have to work and invest in them and avoid panic."
Despite a growing social awareness among the professionals and in the Israeli media of its negative dimensions, comprehensive government action is lacking among the various ministries and voluntary immigrant assistance agencies.
The same is true at the legislative level. Last year, five Knesset parliamentary subcommittees held five separate hearings on the subject of Youth at Risk and the social implications of unemployed school dropouts. Four sessions were related to immigrant absorption and the fifth to children's rights in Israel. None dealt exclusively with the problems of alienated juvenile immigrant youths, including the Russian sectarian party Israel Beiteinu, which now has 13 Knesset seats following the March ballot.
Fresh hope exists that once the Knesset subcommittees are staffed, concerted parliamentary action will be taken on the matter.
They are being discriminated against soley on the basis of whom their mothers are. I can completely understand why they're so pissed at Jews. They're right to be pissed. They have a right to be pissed. Though, I doubt Nazism will win many in Isreal to their cause.
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