Israel's biggest challenge isn’t BDS, it’s making Jews of its Russian citizens, confab told

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The biggest challenge to Israel’s survival as the Jewish state isn’t the Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), and it’s not the poison that’s being spread through social media. Instead, it is the failure of the state to integrate its Russian immigrants and to narrow a religious divide, several speakers warned at the fifth annual Jerusalem Post Conference in Manhattan on Sunday.

Thousands of Russian immigrants have not undergone halachic conversions because the process has been made exceedingly difficult by the Israeli chief rabbinate, said Ephraim Halevy, former director of the Mossad and head of the Israeli National Security Council. The result is that Russian immigrants and others cannot legally get married or have bar and bat mitzvahs, and instead have children who are not halachically Jewish, thereby perpetuating and widening the problem, he said.

“If the population in Israel becomes majority not halachcially Jewish, what is the point of the state? It is just like any other place,” said Halevy.

Division and disunity “is a much bigger issue than BDS,“ said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “This is contributing to diminution in the value of being a Jew. We’re making it too hard to be part of our people and making people question if it’s worth it. We’re rejecting and disconnecting our own people, in our own land.” Eckstein urged the chief rabbinate to loosen its grip.

In order to keep the land safe and protect its ability to prosper, it is necessary to clearly identify its enemies and their true goals. Danny Danon, Israel’s envoy to the U.N. and former Likud member of the Knesset, and Florida Senator Rick Scott said that while BDS is one of the greatest threats facing Israel, it is not a threat in the way one would think.

Israel’s economy has not faltered in the face of BDS, instead growing by 71 percent over the past few years, said Danon. BDS mostly affects Palestinians, who lose their jobs and incomes as Israeli factories are forced to move out of areas near the West Bank and Gaza, he said.

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