JERUSALEM — When Michael Sternwasser arrived from Belarus in May with his wife and 13-year-old daughter, one of the first words Hebrew words he learned was pigua, terrorist attack.
Sternwasser, a 48-year-old retired Red Army officer, knew before he made aliyah that Palestinian terror attacks were frequent; his 23-year-old son, who immigrated a year earlier, is a security guard at the Jerusalem Mall and he kept the family well-informed. But, Sternwasser said, he hardly had a choice in moving to Israel.
After 25 years of military service, the overall collapse of public systems in his country left him out of work and homeless. He is not sure how he will integrate into Israeli society; he is too old to serve in the army, the police or even as a guard, he has been told. But Belarus offered no future for himself or his family.
“Israel is small, it doesn’t have good land, it is hot, it is out of water and it has terror attacks, but still people here live well,” he said. “There, they have everything — water, land, resources — but there is nothing in the stores.”
Sternwasser is a living example of the curious fact that, despite the year-old Palestinian intifada with its daily dose of fatal violence, Israel still continues to draw Jews from around the world who hope they will find a better life here.
Some 40,000 immigrants arrived since the new intifada began, and about that number is expected in 2001. While the total is 25 percent lower than the previous year, aliyah officials expect a continued flow from Ukraine and Russia. Others will come from Argentina, Ethiopia, France, England and even a trickle from America.
“They know Israel still has more to offer them than where they are coming from,” said Mike Rosenberg, director general of the Jewish Agency’s aliyah department. “The situation in most of their countries is pretty bad and being part of the Jewish people, having a place to go, gives them a relative advantage over other people in those countries.
“We call it the push and the pull,” he added. “There is no question the pull of Israel has weakened because of the security and economy problems, so most people are coming because of the push.”
And Israel continues to encourage immigration, offering benefits such as a $5,000 grant to immigrants from poor countries and a $2,500 loan, to help them out for the first year. Immigrants also may receive tax breaks, free Hebrew school, and subsidized room and board at immigration centers for the most needy arrivals.
In his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon complimented Russia for encouraging the growth of its Jewish community. But he warned Putin that he would still try to persuade an additional 1 million Jews to join the 1 million who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union over the last decade.
The hopes and worries of many new arrivals are easy to find at Ulpan Etzion, a residential Hebrew school for immigrants in Jerusalem.
One student there is Sasha Libster, 21, a computer programmer, who arrived from Ryzan, near Moscow, in July, as part of a group of young people coming without their parents, or, as the Jewish Agency prefers to say, “before their parents.” He is studying Hebrew and expects to be drafted into the army when he finishes. He has been planning his aliyah since the age of 16, and developments in Israel in the last year were no deterrent.
“Russia is no less dangerous than Israel,” he said in the parlor of the ulpan’s old stone building. “It has anti-Semitism and crime. I feel much better here.” Libster does not expect his family to follow him to Israel, yet he feels quite secure in his choice, calling his friends at the ulpan his new family.
Ulpan officials know how the families may worry, however. After the August suicide bombing of a downtown Jerusalem pizzeria, the officials gave their students an open line to call home. They lined up for hours to tell their parents they were fine.
Ina Lipshitz, immigration coordinator at Jerusalem’s Kiryat Menachem Community Center, says although immigrants continue to arrive in the working-class neighborhood, many are afraid of Jerusalem because of the intifada and prefer other cities.
Lipshitz arrived as part of the great wave of immigration that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. She was young then, she says, and saw it as a sort of adventure. Today’s arrivals are more likely to be coming to join family members, or making the move out of despair.
One of her clients is Yevgeny Garipurin, 47, who came from Uzbekistan last November with his four children and one grandchild. Divorced for seven years, he has been raising his children alone.
Garipurin said he was driven out by the rise of Islamic power. “The Muslims there are not anti-Semitic or against the Jews in particular,” he said. “They are against anyone who speaks Russian, because they perceive the Russians as their former occupiers.”