A few hours before the celebration of the Aliyah Day in the Jerusalem Palace of Congresses (Binyanya ha-mind), the head of the Israeli government learned that the potential of aliyah from Russia is much higher than all previous forecasts - about 1.5 million people.
Binyamin Netanyahu received a delegation of the Russian Jewish Congress in his office on October 25. RJC President Yuri Kanner told the prime minister about the results of a large-scale sociological survey, according to which more than 1% of Russians said they have Jewish roots or kinship with Jews. In Moscow, the share of Jews associated with Jewry is three times as high, which in quantitative terms is more than 300 thousand people.
According to the information of the meeting participants, these figures produced a great impression on the premiere. He enthusiastically talked about the prospect of a new big aliyah from Russia, concluded that it was necessary to expand ties in this direction with Russian Jews, especially in the provinces.
Russian guests told Netanyahu about other RJC research projects. In particular, the daily monitoring of manifestations of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in the country conducted jointly with the SOVA Center. Yuri Kanner noted the steady tendency to reduce the level of anti-Semitism in Russia and the growth of a positive attitude towards Jews, which is sharply different from the modern picture in Europe. Anti-Semitism has become the lot of marginalized people who do not find support in most social strata of Russians.
According to the president of the RJK, this is due to the state policy of Russia and the new social guidelines. The younger generation of Russians has grown, no longer finding the period of state anti-Semitism, cultivated in the post-war years in the USSR. Without this "brainwashing", the negative attitude towards Jews has died away, and even "anti-Israelism" popular in Western countries does not take root - the attitude towards Israel and Israelis is mostly respectful and positive, which affects the attitude towards Russian Jews.
Yuri Kanner thanked the prime minister for his participation in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations in Moscow and expressed the hope that Netanyahu will be able to visit the Russian capital when there will be celebrated the 70th anniversary of Israel in May of next year.
On the same day, the President of the RJC met with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.