As the war in Ukraine continues, Israel Hayom sits down with Yaakov Hagoel, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and acting chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, to discuss what the crisis means for immigration to Israel.
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Q: You visited Ukraine last week. Were you aware of what you would face there?
"None of us is used to what is happening there, and I went to see things for myself, to experience the processes on an emotional and administrative level. We are getting buses full of people out of Ukraine and taking them to guesthouses and hotels we rent in Poland, Romania, and Hungary. After their eligibility for aliyah is verified, the flights depart for Israel, and I was privileged to return to Israel on one of them."
Q: This is not regular, planned aliyah. What happens on those flights?
"As far as I'm concerned, the main thing is the people. You see the tiredness of days, the shock. No one is forcing them to make aliyah, it's a choice, but there was no [orderly] process. You see the 'boom' in their eyes. Some of them have luggage carts, their pets, and their eyes are sad."
Q: Do you see a spark about making aliyah?
"Absolutely. You need to remember that in the last decade alone, about 51,000 Ukrainian Jews have made aliyah, and only 30% of them opted to go to a hotel because they already had family and friends here. They aren't going into the unknown … In my opinion, a lot of them would have gone to Israel in the next few years."
Q: Do you think they'll stay?
"If we absorb them properly, they'll have it good here and stay, and that depends on everyone who lies here. This is more challenging that previous [waves of] aliyah, because a lot of the fathers have stayed behind in Ukraine, as well as their property."
Q: Is Israel ready to take in a wave of immigrants?
"Today, and certainly in the past decade, Israel is a strong country with resources and powers that make taking in aliyah easier. At the same time, this wave of aliyah has its own characteristics that must be addressed.
"Every one of us needs to exert themselves so they will be integrated as well as possible, to adopt them."
Q: At the start of the crisis, there was criticism that there were no representatives of Jewish organizations, or Israeli Jewish Agency workers, in the areas where battles were taking place. That's a problem.
"Criticism is nice, but there are also facts. A month before the war broke out, we worked together with government ministries to prepare for a scenario like this, which I personally didn't think would come to pass. Our offices are in Kyiv, and in our preparations for a war we agreed that as soon as it erupted, we would move our headquarters to Lviv, the big city farthest from the Russian border. But a week later, the Foreign Ministry ordered us to send all Israeli representatives out of Ukraine.
"I admit, we didn't like that order, but we work in coordination with the government … I told a Knesset committee that we couldn't bring olim to Israel with our hands tied. Eventually, the prime minister intervened and told us to go back to Lviv, and we're working from there."
Q: How complicated is it to bring these olim out of a battle zone?
"Our infrastructure is built for that. We have emergency plans for each and every community."
Q: Were you contacted by Jews who wanted to cross the border?
"Just before our talk I got endless Whatsapp messages, 90% of which were requests, mostly from Israelis who want help for their relatives. It's amazing. On the first day of the war, we opened a hotline for olim in Ukrainian, Russian, and Hebrew. At its peak, there were 2,000 calls a day."
Q: Prime Minister Bennett has also instructed the Treasury to allocate you hundreds of millions of shekels to rescue Jews from Ukraine. That certainly can't happen overnight. Are you worried?
"We aren't … The Jewish Agency has already laid out tens of millions of shekels, since this is our purpose. We also raised tens of millions more while we were already on the go from Jews worldwide. We have no doubt the state will supplement most of what we've spent."
Q: What actually happens when a new immigrant or a refugee arrives? From the time they deplane what do things look like?
"I welcome all fair treatment of refugees, but we have to take care of our own first, the people who are entitle to make aliyah under the Law of Return, and there are about 200,000 of them in Ukraine. As for the arrival, on planes rented by the Jewish Agency, most of them go to an absorption center, are given grants of money, and we help them get to wherever they want. The Aliyah and Integration Ministry is doing good work."
Q: According to your own data, last week, Israel took in 7,000 refugees and only 4,000 Ukrainian olim.
"I know that apart from the 4,000-5,000 olim who have already arrived, we have 5,000 more in hotels in Europe. I hope that in the next two weeks, 10,000 olim will arrive … our Russian brothers are also waking up. I think that if we work like we should, there will be tens of thousands of new olim here from Russia and Ukraine within two months."
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