It has been 30 years since the Iron Curtain fell and hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union began landing at Ben Gurion Airport. Almost as soon as they stepped off the plane, they discovered that they were the hottest political commodity in Israel. Today, in the 2019 election, most of the parties are ignoring this sector. They did not launch major Russian-language campaigns, nor did they try to find new “stars” in this community. Even the Russian-oriented Yisrael Beitenu party, headed by Russian-born Avigdor Liberman, has been weakened significantly, and is now hovering on the voter threshold. Where did the “Russian vote” disappear and why?

As early as the 1992 election, politicians realized that 1 million new immigrants from the former Soviet Union could change the Israeli political map completely. They poured considerable efforts into winning the votes of these new immigrants, offering them all sorts of benefits, events and happenings. They even promised economic miracles. Your mortgage will not be linked to the economic index, the Labor Party promised in 1992. In 1996, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to provide a job for every immigrant in his or her field.

In 1992, the “Russian vote” won the election for Yitzhak Rabin. Four years later, in 1996, it won the election for Netanyahu. In 1999, the book “Soldier Number One” (by Ben Caspit, translated into Russian and then distributed for free by associates of Ehud Barak) did the trick for Ehud Barak. At the same time, human rights activist Natan Sharansky founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party, while Liberman founded Yisrael Beitenu in 1999. Both of these were immigrant parties.

But many years have passed since then, and those immigrants have been integrated. In the 2003 election, Yisrael BaAliyah received just two seats and merged with the Likud Party. Similarly, Yisrael Beitenu has grown weaker. It was at the height of its strength in 2009 that it won 15 seats. In the last election, in 2015, it dropped to just six seats, with only some of them from the Russian sector. Many of the immigrants who acquired the language and found employment in their fields believe that this was a very natural development. “It is important that every community is represented in every major party, so that they can deal with the issues unique to their communities,” Attorney Polina Hasin of Jerusalem told Al-Monitor. “On the other hand, there is no room in the Israeli polity for a specifically 'Russian' party, especially when the party failed to fulfill its promises to its base.”