Israeli expats and the Germany question

Israeli expats boasting on social media, about the great lifestyle in Berlin and encouraging others to join them, have enraged those at home, says Aron Heller

YOUNG Israeli expats have caused controversy back home by encouraging others to join them in Berlin, touching on two sensitive issues in Israel: the country’s high cost of living and Jews’ tortured history with Germany.

While Israelis have been angered that food prices are lower in Germany, they are also outraged that the youngsters’ form of protest has been to give up on the Zionist dream by leaving the Jewish state, and relocating to the birthplace of the Nazi Party. It rankles in a society that once considered emigration treasonous, and when many Israelis want solidarity after a brutal summer in Gaza underscored political woes in Israel.

Several weeks ago a 25-year-old former Israeli army officer in Berlin flaunted photos of his grocery receipts — including a popular chocolate pudding that sells in Germany for one-third the price of Israel — and boasted about the good life in the German capital.

Now known as the ‘Milky’ protest, after the pudding’s Israeli name, the Facebook campaign has received 17,000 ‘likes’ and pictures of Israelis holding signs asking German Chancellor Angela Merkel to give them a visa have gone viral. Israeli TV channels have sent reporters to Berlin.

The campaign reflects continued economic discontent, three years after a massive protest by hundreds of thousands of Israelis, demanding lower prices, more affordable housing, and a narrower gap between rich and poor, largely failed.

But the idealisation of Berlin is a hurtful provocation. Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed, memories are still fresh — especially among Israel’s large community of survivors, some of whom refuse to visit Germany or buy its products.

Israeli finance minister, Yair Lapid, whose centrist, Yesh Atid party rode the 2011 protests to become a major player in politics, said he sympathised with the burden of the new protesters, but not with their method. “These people are anti-Zionists. I’m a Zionist, I think Jews should live in Israel,” he said. “That doesn’t change the fact that the cost of living is high here ... The cost of living is not the only question for a person to consider when deciding where to live, and by which values.”

The former army officer who instigated the protest said he still loves his country, defends it when it is slandered in Europe and would prefer to live in Tel Aviv, but just can’t afford it. His goal is to spur politicians into action.

“My aim is to educate the Israeli government. They need to make Israel a more attractive place for young people,” said the slim man with short-cropped black hair and dark brown eyes. He asked that his identity be withheld, because he wants “the public to focus on the message, not on the messenger.”

He said thousands of exasperated Israelis have asked him for help in getting visas. If Israelis leave the country, the government will be forced to serve the public better.

Cabinet minister Yair Shamir, son of former prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, and a member of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, told the Maariv newspaper that he pities “the Israelis who no longer remember the Holocaust and abandoned Israel for a pudding.”

In the daily Haaretz, columnist Ravit Hecht said ultra-nationalists were driving the young away, but that was no excuse to go. “Berlin is a lovely city, but it is sucking away all the forces that we desperately need here, especially now,” she wrote.

Like many other expatriates drawn to Berlin’s cheap housing and vibrant lifestyle, thousands of Israelis call the city home. Since many enter Germany with other European passports or come for a limited time, it’s hard to track numbers: Estimates range from 3,000 to 30,000. Many come for free university study and work as artists and musicians. Others have opened small businesses and organized Hebrew language classes and activities for children. Those with German passports are also eligible for a welfare stipend of €400 a month.

Eran Levy, a 46-year-old who moved to Berlin nine years ago, said he enjoys the calmer pace of life and the relief that his daughter is growing up far away from bomb shelters and rocket attacks. “I like how people in Berlin are so non-judgmental and take me as I am,” said Levy, who works in customer service and is now fluent in German.

Demographers say the phenomenon is more symbolic than actual. The number of European Jews who move to Israel is much higher than the number of Israelis heading to Europe. France has Western Europe’s largest population of Jews, at 500,000: Emigration from France this year, to Israel, is set to top the annual record of 5,300, set after the Six-Day War in 1967, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel — in part due to concerns about militant Islam and France’s sluggish economy.

Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Israeli emigration has dropped considerably and those who do leave are headed primarily to the United States and Canada. He said the latest Central Bureau of Statistics figures showed that 2012 had the lowest emigration rate in decades. That same year, only 3,065 Israelis were documented as living in Berlin. “There is a big gap between the mood and the facts,” he said. Even so, the idea of people leaving when the going gets tough is hard to swallow in Israel, where struggle and sacrifice are engrained in the psyche.

Former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, once derided Israelis who left the country as “a cascade of wimps.” He would be outraged by the Olim Le’Berlin group behind the come-to-Berlin campaign, whose name uses the Hebrew word typically reserved for Jews immigrating to Israel — ‘aliyah’.

Even if the economic argument is justified, Israelis largely feel that giving up should not be allowed.

“What does any of that have to do with Berlin? What does any of that have to do with the disgusting trend of encouraging Israelis to emigrate?” columnist Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv. “The war over our home needs to be fought at home.” (AP)