"You fled a dictatorship? Vote for democracy!": Two waves of immigration, a million Russian speakers, and a political system that speaks only in stereotypes
Polls opened today, and parties are vying for the "Russian vote": Likud with an ad featuring two elderly women in a taxi and thousands of anonymous text messages against Lieberman, while other parties field Russian-speaking campaign staff and candidates. Behind the label lie two immigration waves with almost nothing in common: some 575,000 immigrants from the 1990s, for whom the right built media and loyalty over three decades, and over 255,000 immigrants since 2014, many of them young people who fled war and regime and will vote for the first time. Six activists and one artist describe a political system that speaks to them in stereotypes and a left that gave up on them from the start.
Polls opened today, and parties are vying for the "Russian vote": Likud with an ad featuring two elderly women in a taxi and thousands of anonymous text messages against Lieberman, while other parties field Russian-speaking campaign staff and candidates. But behind the label lie two immigration waves with almost nothing in common: some 575,000 immigrants from the 1990s, for whom the right built media and loyalty over three decades, and over 255,000 immigrants since 2014, many of them young people who fled war and regime and will vote for the first time. Six activists and one artist describe a political system that speaks to them in stereotypes and a left that gave up on them from the start. Their demand: speak to them in Russian, and stop calling them "the sector." The article quotes Gila, 33, born in Neve Yaakov, who says of the Likud ad: "An abusive home is the home you return to." It also analyzes the gap between the electoral power of Russian speakers and their political representation, with a decline in the number of Knesset members from the former Soviet Union.