"I didn't know the presence of neo-Nazis in Israel interested the Israeli media," says Zalman Gilichinsky, looking bored.

Gilichinsky has been surveilling neo-Nazi activity in Israel for the past 17 years from his modest apartment in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood, but failed to attract the media or authorities' attention. "Nobody wants to know. The politicians ignore it. Occasionally, some act of vandalism makes the headlines, raising a brief interest that dies shortly afterward," he says.

In April 2003, the Russian-language newspaper Russki Israiltyanin carried a story about the neo-Nazi Bei (White Israeli Union) Web site.

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The British newspaper The Guardian reported the story, which also appeared in Haaretz, raising a storm. The cabinet held a session about it and the attorney general ordered a criminal investigation. The Web site was shut down immediately. A Knesset committee headed by MK Colette Avital was set up to probe the issue and invited Gilichinsky to talk about it.

This cheered him up somewhat, but not for long. The committee was slow and ineffective, he says. "Avital asked the police years ago to prepare a report. To this day it has not been done," he says.

The committee's last debate was in July 2005. Avital asked the police whether they had completed the report. They said they were still studying the subject. Gilichinsky's queries to Petah Tikva police commander Moti Feldman about anti-Semitic incidents in that town received no response.

Gilichinsky also has complaints against the Israeli media. "In Western countries, anti-Semitic incidents receive wide media coverage, the politicians denounce it and fight against it. But the Israeli media ignore it and are afraid to deal with it," he says.

In contrast, the foreign media is interested and interviews Gilichinsky frequently, he says. Reporters from Finnish and Swedish radio are on their way to talk to him, he says. "I received calls from all over the world after the story of the desecration of the synagogue in Petah Tikva. Only in Israel there was hardly any interest."

Gilichinsky, married and a father of four, immigrated to Israel in 1989 from Kishinev, capital of the republic of Moldova due to the rising anti-Semitism and the shaky economic situation. He never dreamed that in the Jewish state he would run into the anti-Semitism he had fled from.

"Shortly after I arrived, I saw a letter from immigrants in the Russian language newspaper Novosti Nedeli, about the anti-Semitic conduct of certain imigrants, who swore at them said, among other things, "pity Hitler didn't liquidate the lot of you."

He started looking into the matter and following similar incidents in the Russian language media. "At first it was just curiosity, until in 1999 I ran an ad in Vesti, asking immigrants to report incidents of anti-Semitism in Israel. To my surprise, I received hundreds of letters. I realized it was a growing trend," he says.

He and a friend founded the Information Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel, a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization. It is run by volunteers, mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Realizing the need to focus on public relations and information, he set up the Web site pogrom.org.il about three years ago.

Gilichinsky's requests to cooperate with the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center went unanswered. Professor Dina Porat, Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel-Aviv University, replied to his request for help, saying that the institute has "no mandate to deal with incidents in Israel and only deals with anti-Semitism overseas."

"I guess there are more urgent things in Israel than anti-Semitism," he says.