If we're going by the numbers, it doesn't add up - Haaretz

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Sat., December 15, 2007 Tevet 6, 5768

Israel Time: 01:41 (EST+7)

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If we're going by the numbers, it doesn't add up

By Anshel Pfeffer

The run-up to the end of 2007 is upon us and the papers are going to be full of various unimportant statistics of how many this year, more or less, and what can we expect for 2008.

Hiding somewhere on the back pages, beneath all these meaningless figures will be the immigration numbers for the last year. Don't hold your breath, they're going to be down again. The January to November figures paint a very clear picture, and if there wasn't a sudden wave this month (and there wasn't), then immigration will have been down 7 or 8 percent this year. Only about 18,000 Jews came from around the world this year to live in the Jewish state. And what makes the statistics even more grim reading is the country-by-country numbers; there are no signs of hope for the future.

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Last year, when immigration was also down, there was, at least, an upward trend coming from the English-speaking countries, primarily the U.S. and Britain. This year, Anglo immigration is also down. There is an increase in immigrants coming from Latin America, but those numbers are negligible in the overall picture. And immigration from Ethiopia is also slightly up, but since 2007 was probably the very last year of mass immigration from that country, and the government has decided that from June no more Falashmura will be allowed in; their immigration numbers will have dwindled in the coming year. But are these numbers necessarily a bad thing? Arik Sharon used to speak of bringing a million immigrants over the next decade. Now, it doesn't look as if we'll be getting even a quarter of that sum.

The whole story

Off-record, the more serious heads in the Jewish Agency will tell you these are the natural numbers, 17,000 or 18,000 a year. The great waves of immigration are a thing of the past. The Ethiopian operation is being wrapped up, the Jews in the former Soviet Union who haven't come so far seem intent on having their share of whatever economic miracles are going on in their home countries and even the "threatened" Jews of Iran and Venezuela don't seem to be taking advantage of the easily available escape routes. For the great majority of them, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez seem less-daunting prospects to the option of uprooting their families and giving up their businesses. Immigration from France is still relatively healthy, but the mass exodus, predicted in the wake of the Muslim rioting, has so far failed to materialize; meanwhile, the rise of Sarkozy has set many troubled minds at rest. There are those who still believe that anti-Semitism will inevitably arise again in the West, and hundreds of thousands of once-confident American, British, Australian and French Jews will be forced to seek refuge in Zion. But that doesn't seem to be happening quite yet.

There are of course those who believe that it's all a matter of changing the established attitude toward immigration, and that the way to bring more Western Jews is the more personalized, customer-orientated methods of private organizations like Nefesh B'Nefesh in North America and Britain and AMI in France. But if the 2007 figures are anything to go by, the much-publicized efforts by these two organizations haven't succeeded in boosting overall immigration numbers from these countries. That doesn't mean the new attitude toward immigrants shared by the private organizations and a growing number of senior officials within the old guard of the Jewish Agency and Absorption Ministry is necessarily wrong.

Perhaps no one is to blame for the low numbers of immigrants; perhaps the numbers are no longer a reliable measure of success in this field. The numbers don't tell us how many of the new immigrants are young couples and singles, with useful professions and bright prospects of absorption, nor how many of them are disillusioned and alienated teenagers, soon to lead lives of delinquency and generate headlines for scrawling swastikas on synagogue walls in Petah Tikva, how many of them are 80-year-old pensioners from eastern Europe arriving simply to enjoy the much more favorable health services?

Citizenship redefined

How many wealthy Jews have arrived here, bought houses and contributed to the economy, but, for various reasons, decided not to take out citizenship? Less than 3,000 Jews arrive annually from France, but there are about 100,000 of them who spend a month or two here each year, celebrating every major family occasion in Israel. And it's not only the very rich Jews from the U.S. and Britain who maintain second homes here. In an ever shrinking world, where cheap air travel and instant communication open up ever-increasing opportunities, commuting lawyers, accountants, doctors and businesspeople, spending their weekends with the family in Tel Aviv and working five days on the other side of the world, have almost become the norm. Many of them are not officially Israeli, but shouldn't they also be considered immigrants?

For all its faults, Israel at the outset of 2008 enjoys a fairly stable economy, quite a lot of people are making a lot of money, and even the middle class don't have it so bad anymore. Despite the media hype, crime is much lower in Israel than in the U.S. or Britain, and the low chances of getting mugged or randomly knifed on the street cancels out the threat of terrorism. Yes, the schools haven't been doing so well of late, but if you take a look at the international education tables, you'll find the U.S., Britain and France not very far above us. And Israel undoubtedly offers a high level of Jewish education for a fraction of the price it costs in the wealthy communities of the Diaspora. The standard of life in North America and western Europe is still higher, but the gap is much smaller today that it was 30, 20 or even 10 years ago, and it's shrinking all the time.

Zionism is not dead. There are always those who will come for purely ideological reasons, but for the rest of potential immigrants, it has become increasingly a matter of convenience and lifestyle. The numbers game is obsolete, and those hoping the Jews of the world will arrive in droves and save Israel from demographic catastrophe are deluding themselves.

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