Two months ahead of Israel’s third round of elections in less than a year, all means appear to be justified by the end of gaining as many votes as possible on March 2, including the spreading of falsehoods, wild incitement against entire population groups and dissemination of absurd conspiracy theories. This week Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the son of the founder of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, spread serious allegations regarding the Jewish identity of Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union and Israel’s motives in bringing them into the country.

The comments by Yosef, a senior public official on the government’s payroll, were made at a recent conference of rabbis in Jerusalem and they were reported Jan. 7 by Ynet. The chief rabbi stated, “Tens or hundreds of thousands of non-Jews came here under the ‘who is a Jew’ law,” the chief rabbi stated, referring to an amendment to the law of return that allows the immigration of grandchildren of Jews. “Some are communists, hostile to religion, haters of religion. They're not even Jewish, they're gentiles. … They were brought here to provide a counterweight to the ultra-Orthodox so that if elections are held, there will not be many votes for the ultra-Orthodox. That was why they were brought here. Total non-Jews. Unfortunately, we see the fruit of the incitement they conduct.”

It was not the first time that ultra-Orthodox politicians and rabbis have sought to make political capital on the backs of the more than one million immigrants from the former Soviet states. During the 2013 election campaign, Shas posted a satirical video of a Jewish wedding between an Israeli-born groom and Russian-speaking bride that suggested immigrants were undergoing fictitious conversions to Judaism. The video caused a storm at the time, but six years on, ahead of the April 2019 elections, Shas leader Aryeh Deri was back with the familiar refrain, declaring at a rally in Ashdod that immigrants from the former Soviet Union are DNA tested to prove their Jewishness. He later clarified that his ministry does not conduct such tests.

The current tirade against Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union followed a Dec. 23 Ynet report of a document compiled by the Population and Immigration Authority according to which 86% of those immigrating to Israel are non-Jews. The report also noted that only 4.3% of immigrants from Russia are Jewish. Several hours later, the Interior Ministry conceded that the figures were imprecise, but still claimed that most immigrants from Russia and Ukraine were not Jewish.