HOWARD EPSTEIN – ISRAEL LETTER – The Silent Crisis
With Moscow positioning 100 battle groups of the Russian Army along Ukraine’s borders for a possible major offensive in early 2022, what the West currently fears, as much as Omicron, is a full-scale invasion by the Bear of its smaller and long-suffering southern neighbour. It seems that President Putin thinks that Russia leaders have caused the Ukrainian people insufficient pain, notwithstanding the Stalin-inflicted Holodomor famine of 1932 that took the lives of five to seven million Ukrainian men, women and children.
America and European states (including the UK) must be quietly pleased that they never got around to adding Ukraine as a member of NATO, for if it were, they would be contractually obliged to go to war to defend it – and who would want to go to war for a faraway country of which they know little? What was good (or bad) enough for Czechoslovakia in 1938 is clearly good (or bad) enough for Ukraine in 2022.
Poor Ukraine. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, she held about one third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal – approximately 1,700 warheads. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to destroy the weapons – and duly denuded herself of its ultimate protector.
We know from our current observation of North Korea that possession of one or two nuclear warheads can secure even the most vile of regimes. We also know that those who voluntarily renounce their nuclear umbrella, such as the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, can end up in a ditch (as he did in 2011) full of regret and lead – and dead. Sadly for Ukraine, these lessons post-dated its selflessness.
The 2014 Russian incursion into Donbass and Crimea was a little local difficulty, yet that conflict, followed by limited retaliatory US sanctions, dramatically increased Aliyah. Some 30,000 Ukrainian Olim arrived in Israel between 2014 and 2018, while nearly 40,000 came from Russia, exceeding by some 10% in those four years Aliyah from the same source over the whole of the previous decade.
A full-scale war in 2022 may trigger a major refugee crisis. The dark threat (or bright promise) of a large-scale influx to Israel from Ukraine and Russia may well be realistic. As we know from the Russian Aliyah of the 1990s, not identifying as Jews, nor being less than halachically Jewish, is not considered a reason not to come to Israel and to be accepted.
According to the 2019 American Jewish Year Book, some 200,000 Ukrainians are eligible for Aliyah under the Law of Return. Further, it is believed that some 600,000 Russian citizens are eligible for Aliyah. A mere quarter of those potential Olim would mean getting on for a quarter of a million new, high-quality immigrants (all educated in the traditional, solid Russian manner), might soon be applying for Israeli citizenship, by this time next year.
We may be excused for reminding ourselves that it was not discovery of the Torah that led to the 1990s Russian Aliyah, but the inability to discover a steady supply of bread. Given that economic migration is all the rage today between the opposite shores of the English Channel, why not expect something similar from the hard underbelly of Europe towards Israel?
Whilst the US and the EU are not prepared to go to war to save Ukraine, swingeing sanctions have been touted. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week threatened that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would trigger “high impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from taking in the past,” whilst EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced: “Any aggression against Ukraine will come with political consequences and with a high economic cost for Russia.” Accordingly, any Russo-Ukrainian war could well precipitate a Russian financial downturn – or meltdown.
Last week, I observed that the Russian economy is more or less the size of that of Italy but with two and a half times the population. That being so, one shrinks from imagining what Russian financial meltdown would look like – and what Aliyah it could catalyse.
The Russian Aliyah of the 1990s, which greatly swelled the numbers working in the Israeli hi-tech sector, made a major contribution to its present success. Here is some evidence, from last week’s JPost:-
“Israel’s tech sector has broken new ground and raised an unprecedented $25 billion in 2021, according to a report from Start-Up Nation Central …The unprecedented figure represents a 136% increase over last year …. nearly double the global average growth of 71%, and well exceeds the United States’ 78%, Singapore’s 95%, and the UK’s 105% ….”
It seems that Israel may need every cubic inch of the fiscal cushion it has amassed for the more comfortable absorption of large numbers of Olim. Whilst that is likely to mean fiscal constriction for the Russian economy, experience suggests a long term further boost for that of Israel.
© Howard Epstein – December 2021
