Immigrant Party Hopes for Votes in Israeli Elections

RISHON LE ZION, Israel — Russian-born Israelis, who represent the largest immigrant group in this nation of immigrants, are hoping to make significant inroads into local government when voters go to the polls today.

Amid a flare-up of anti-immigrant sentiment, immigrant parties are testing newfound political strength and running dozens of candidates for city council and mayoral offices throughout Israel.

Here in the middle-class Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Le Zion, where about one-quarter of the population is from the former Soviet Union, campaign posters in the Cyrillic alphabet urge voters to “remember the past [and] think of the future.” A veritable army of workers staffed telephones at Israel’s main Russian-immigrant party Monday, instructing everyone to get out and vote. Scarcely a word of Hebrew could be heard.

“It is the first time we are taking such a huge step,” mayoral candidate Michael Raif, 52, said as he handed out T-shirts advertising the Israel With Immigration party. “Our people need to be represented, not against anybody else, but for ourselves. We have a great potential to offer this country.”

Political scientists see the prospect of success by immigrant parties as another step in the evolution of Israel from a collective society with shared values to one with more democratic--and more fragmented--politics.

The intense effort this time comes amid rising tensions between Russian-born immigrants and immigrants from other countries, as well as with native-born Israelis. The “Russians,” as all people from the ex-Soviet Union are known here, report scattered election-related violence, including the vandalizing of their offices and destruction of voter lists.

On Monday, top Israeli officials condemned the weekend slaying of a 22-year-old Moldovan immigrant who had been serving in the Israeli army in the coastal city of Ashkelon. The man’s companions said they were attacked at a restaurant by “native Israelis” enraged because the young men were speaking in Russian.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Ezer Weizman expressed shock at the slaying and demanded an end to violence against Israel’s foreign-born.

“We are a state of aliyah [immigration], and it is the meaning of our lives here,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “We cannot accept attacks on immigrants because they are immigrants.”

An enormous wave of immigration to Israel from all parts of the former Soviet Union throughout the 1990s transformed the Russians into the single largest ethnic category here, according to a new study by Hebrew University.

Using data from the Israeli Bureau of Statistics, the study counts 900,000 people from the former Soviet Union, supplanting Moroccan Jews, who number half a million and had been the largest group before 1990.

Many Sephardic Jews, including Moroccans and others of Middle Eastern origin, are resentful of the generally better-educated Russian emigres. Russians, who are Ashkenazi, or European, Jews, complain in turn that they are forced into menial labor despite their college degrees.

Compared with their numbers, Russians seem extremely underrepresented in government institutions. Community leaders blame the Russians’ lack of familiarity with democracy and trouble with the language. Still, they form an emerging bloc that has been courted by Netanyahu and has lent support to his center-right coalition.

The Israel With Immigration party, founded by former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky, is the main immigrant party, representing primarily Russians but others as well. In its first electoral venture, in the 1996 parliamentary contest, it won seven seats in the 120-member parliament, the Knesset.

Sharansky, who serves as trade minister, is upbeat about today’s races despite competition from other immigrant lists and candidates in 160 towns and cities. Expecting to mark a “breakthrough” in the rise of immigrant political power, he predicted victory for at least 100 city council candidates and a dozen deputy mayors from his party.

For Sharansky and others, the potential clout is part of a quest for self-determination that puts an end to Israel’s more paternal notion of immigration and integration.

Instead of voting based on ideology or beliefs, Israelis are increasingly turning to parties that represent specific interests.

“As in any country with a lot of immigration, the idea of the melting pot is changing,” said Ruth Amir, a political scientist at Haifa University. “The whole society is going through a transition from a very collectivistic type of Israeli character to a society where particular interests are accentuated. Once, you voted for a party because you identified with it. Now, you vote because maybe there’s something in it for you.”

Back in Rishon Le Zion, Russian immigrant candidates were candid about targeting their specific constituency. Leading up to today’s election, teams of Russian immigrants fanned out around the city to locate every Russian eligible to vote. They reproduced maps and translated all the street names into Russian. They gave out leaflets explaining the Hebrew-letter symbol that will by law represent the party on the ballot. And plans for election day were for teams to be seated at every polling station ticking off the names of Russians who vote, and then telephoning or visiting those who don’t.

The plan, said Michael Ruvinetz, 51, a city council candidate, is to overcome the Russians’ traditional reticence and do everything possible to get them to the polls.

“It is monumental work,” Ruvinetz said at party headquarters. “But we think we have a good chance of making a splash.”