person:natan sharansky

Hundreds of French MASA participants attend Jerusalem aliya fair - Israel News - Jerusalem Post

▻http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Hundreds-of-French-MASA-participants-attend-Jerusalem-aliya-fair-393622

Hundreds of young French Masa participants gathered at the Jerusalem Theater Wednesday evening to learn about their options should they choose to immigrate. According to the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Aliya and Immigrant Absorption, some one thousand people were slated to attend the event.

France became the leading source of immigrants for the first time in 2014 with almost 7,000 new arrivals, double the number from 2013, according to the agency. Despite last summer’s war with Gaza and attendant missile fire on Israeli cities, French Jews continued to stream here over the summer, fleeing rising anti-Semitism and economic malaise.

In a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post, agency chairman Natan Sharansky said that some 50,000 French Jews inquired regarding aliya last year, and the agency is holding two information seminars a day in France, whereas a year ago it held only one a month.

At the theater young men and women mingled in front of tables staffed by representatives of the IDF, national service organizations and academic institutions as well as experts from the absorption ministry and Jewish Agency explaining the various “aliya tracks” available to them.

“I am coming on aliya at the end of the year,” Rivkah Ehrman, an eighteen year old from the Strasbourg area told The Jerusalem Post.

“I love Israel, it’s our land and it’s not so good in France,” she said, referencing the rising anti-Semitism plaguing the country.

Most of those present will likely end up making the move, said Patrick Ferdman, a Jewish Agency emissary present at the event.

Most people that complete the Masa program who come from France, Belgium and Switzerland make aliya immediately, he stated, adding that “most saying they won’t go back and will open their [aliya file] here.”

Haim Sultan, a nineteen year old immigrant from Paris attending the event with friends, agreed.

“Most of the people here will come,” he guessed.

The Ministry of Aliya and Immigrant Absorption “is constantly working to adapt the [immigration] services to the needs of immigrants and provide quick, professional response for French Jews who wish to immigrate to Israel,” minister Sofa Landver, who had to cancel her appearance at the event at the last moment, told the Jerusalem Post through a spokesman.

Citing French anti-Semitism, Landver said that it is imperative to “invest all our might to strengthen the system of immigration encouragement and absorption” of which Masa is an important component, she said.

In February the cabinet approved a 180 million Shekel immigration plan aimed at French, Belgian and Ukrainian Jews focused on aliya promotion, “strengthening and adapting absorption processes” and special assistance for immigrants from “emergency areas.”

Among the provisions of the new plan are an moves to promote Hebrew language instruction among prospective immigrants, raising the number of immigration fairs and increasing the number of immigration emissaries to speed up the immigration process. Seminars in the fields of housing, health, social welfare, education and employment will be held to provide more information than is traditionally available to newcomers.

Aside from strengthening traditional promotional tactics, the initiative will also provide for counseling on “personally adapted absorption tracks” relating to professionals in various fields looking to find work in, or move businesses to the Jewish state.

It’s not anti-Semitism when you’re lying down with lepers
Unqualified supporters of Israel would do better to question some Jews’ identification with Europe’s most nationalist, xenophobic and Islamophobic groups.
By Avraham Burg | Aug. 15, 2014 Haaretz
►http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.610658

“This war has advantages; Europe is emptying out,” an important yet superficial public figure told me, expressing her brand of Zionist satisfaction. “Once again it has been proved that Israel is the only solution,” she said, patting Israelis on the back and hurting me in the process.

My colleague Anshel Pfeffer confirmed what I’m talking about in a wise and accurate piece. He quoted Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky, who prophesied in Zionist fashion: “We are seeing the beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe.” Save for the typical hysteria, accepted demagogy and Zionist opportunism, I can’t understand how some people can’t understand that this equation has very few variables, and all are known.

Let’s start with the definition. The use of the old term “anti-Semitism in Europe” is tendentious, deceptive and deceiving. In the bad old days of anti-Semitism in Europe, from the end of the 19th century to 1945, the issue was exclusively a European one. Part stemmed from church traditions and part from the powerful rise of nationalist ideas that could not include tribal members such as the Jews and the Roma.

From this were born two conspiracy theories; the “Bolshevik Jews” on the one hand and the “Capitalist Jews” as the Elders of Zion on the other. But the West, especially Europe, has come a long way in uprooting systematic and institutional anti-Semitism. Fundamental democratic and humanistic values have been deeply inculcated.

The very different hatred and slander in contemporary Europe shows that the definitions above have not been met. The source is not Christianity; most of the rioters in Europe are Muslims whose motives stem from external issues — colonialism, tension between the first and third worlds, church versus state, and the Middle East conflict.

Thus, to use the term anti-Semitism to describe something that occurs between two Semitic tribes is to surrender to convenience and habit. It isn’t anti-Semitism.

Use of this term is emotional manipulation, it’s use of the Holocaust and the infinite credit Israel derives from it to silence all justified criticism. It paints in shades of Nazism everyone who objects to Israel’s improper actions. Moreover, Israel has ignored this phenomenon for many years, so it can’t complain much when people in the West ignore what is sacred to Israel.

Meanwhile, we must focus on Israel’s part in this riot of hatred. Let’s be accurate: The rioters, inciters, persecutors and attackers are merely criminals. They’re often the representatives of terrorist organizations and nations, loud fringes or street thugs whom the national authorities must address decisively (and do).

But that they are evil does not make us righteous. A direct relationship has repeatedly been proved between the flames between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and the hate crimes against Jews in Europe.

Israel’s contribution does not end there. Israel proudly claims that it’s the nation of the Jewish people; all other Jews around the world are imaginary citizens of this distant Mideast country that so many Jews have never visited. An expansion of the circle of violence to the virtual citizens that Israel has annexed is natural.

Add to this Jewish organizations’ full identification with every position — right or foolish — of every Israeli government, and we have a full convergence between the Israeli front and the Jewish space. Anyone who demands full identification with Israel condemns every alternative voice.

Meanwhile, many Jewish voices have been heard in recent years favoring cooperation with Europe’s most nationalist, xenophobic and Islamophobic groups. Some of these groups are true Nazis and neo-Nazis.

All this is happening with the encouragement of people in Israel’s parliament and government out of narrow considerations that the enemy of my enemy is my potential friend. So those who lie down with lepers shouldn’t be surprised if they wake up itching.