A lot of these people are mafia. They take advantage of the Right of Return to get Israeli passports and funnel money into the Israeli mob. Berezovsky used to be an Israeli citizen.
The Russian government recently snubbed Arafat during a Mideast visit, refusing to meet with him, and they're taking a much softer line vis-a-vis Israeli policy on the Palestinians, presumably because there are something like a million Russian voters in Israel.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ---------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 23:04:00 +0000 (GMT) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Cian?= <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Russian Israelis
Fairly good, if a bit generalistic story on the affect Russian immigrants are having on Israel from the New Statesman. Does anyone have any sources (books, webpages) which go into this in more depth?
One particularly amusing/depressing aspect to this story is that of course lots of the immigrants are Jewish at all. Wierd to think that in their desire to preserve Jewish purity, they're bringing in non Jewish Russians...
http://www.consider.net/forum_new.php3?newTemplate=OpenObject&newTop=2002031 80006&newDisplayURN=200203180006
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