Yisrael Beytenu’s campaign in Russian includes antisemitic messages, a group of immigrants from the former Soviet Union argued, launching a website to translate their messages into Hebrew. Titled “Danger From Within Our Home,” a play on Yisrael Beytenu’s name, which means Israel Our Home, the site compares Yisrael Beytenu’s ads to “propaganda from the 1930s in one of the countries in Europe that we won’t mention” that “accuses [haredim] or conspiracies meant to steal the livelihood of immigrants from the former Soviet Union…All the propaganda is based on the greediness of the Jews.” The site features videos posted by Yisrael Beytenu and comments from party officials in Russian that portray haredim as interested only in money and living at the expense of others. Some of the ads featuring haredim take the tone of a horror film, through musical and visual cues. One video, starring MK Alex Kushnir speaking in Russian, went viral last week with Hebrew subtitles. Kushnir tells his audience to imagine an adult lived in your house who didn’t study, didn’t work, didn’t go to the army, “and really doesn’t know anything…and tells you how to live,” and then says “it happens to all of us.” “Over a million representatives of the Orthodox community are living at our expense,” he said. “The state subsidizes them with our takes, with our work.” A Facebook post by the party in Russian says that a rabbi from the religious-Zionist Bnei David Mechina in Eli in the West Bank is training future IDF soldiers to believe that “Jews must be the masters and Arabs and other nations must be slaves. That could include immigrants from the Former Soviet Union.” Haifa Deputy Mayor Lazar Kaplun from Yisrael Beytenu wrote in a Facebook comment that “the Orthodox binge, drink and rape minors under God’s cover. Don’t confuse believers and the zombie radicals.” In another post, he wrote that haredim “claim they are the master race. That reminds me of someone, only he had a mustache and they have beards.” Another video shows haredim dancing with dollar bills raining on them. A video with a more comedic tone portrays Blue and White leader Benny Gantz as the title character in the movie “Forest Gump,” who accidentally ended up in the middle of the political action. In it, UTJ leader Ya’acov Litzman says “give me a million, give me a million!” and Aryeh Deri of Shas, whose name means lion, is the MGM logo lion, surrounded by dollar signs. The website was established by Natalia Rothenberg, a secular grandmother of five from Kfar Saba and a former refusenik. “Unfortunately, there is antisemtism against Jews in Israel,” Rothenberg told Makor Rishon. “Yisrael Beytenu’s campaign awakens sleeping antisemites who live here in Israel. When they say haredim are parasites and destroying our society, the direct result is horrible antisemitic comments…When there is a Yisrael Beytenu video of haredim dancing while money falls on them, it creates irreversible social harm.” In a video posted on the site, a woman named Tania Blum, whose Facebook page features posts in favor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “I’m from the 1970s [wave of] Aliyah. It was very Zionist…People sat in prison” in the Soviet Union, because they wanted to come to Israel. Yisrael Beytenu “came out against a campaign against haredim and religious people, and there is a surge of antisemitism in Russian,” on social media, Blum said. “You wouldn’t believe what they right, like ‘if the haredim win, we’ll start pogroms,’ or ‘now we understand why people hated Jews around the world.’” The party did not respond to a request for comment, but in Makor Rishon, Yisrael Beytenu accused the people who established the website of being Likud supporters and bitter former Yisrael Beytenu activists.
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