Israel is undergoing Russiafication says Lily Galili in HaAretz (this phrase only appears in the Hebrew version of the article).

What Lily means to say is that veteran Israelis increasingly share the immigrants’ negative views of the police. In other words, Russian immigrants are more suspicious of the police, and are more likely to feel persecuted by the police.

Two examples are fresh in memory. The first is Russian Knesset member Marina Solodkin who recently stood by a suspected child murderer, and seems to believe some conspiracy theories.

MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima) accused the authorities yesterday of taking advantage of a Ukrainian immigrant’s ignorance of Israeli law to “set him up” as the alleged murderer of 13-year-old Tair Rada from the Golan Heights.

The second example is the reason why Lily Galili wrote the aforementioned quote. Avigdor Lieberman, a Russian immigrant, and the leader of the “Yisrael Beytenu” (Israel is Our Home) party, is once again being harassed by the police in connection with some serious corruption allegations. The irony is that the more involved Lieberman becomes with police investigations, the more support he receives from the Israeli-Russian public.

Personally, I agree. This might not be a politically correct statement, but Israel is definitely undergoing Russiafication — Whatever that means, and however you choose to interpret this statement.

In the past 20 years, more than a million immigrants have arrived in Israel from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Along with their luggage, the Russian immigrants brought with them a unique blend of political and social impressions. Most of them have aligned with the far-right of the political map, and ultimately, have irrefutably transformed our national discourse to what it is today.

On the bright side, the racist hostility towards Russians that had used to characterise veteran Israelis throughout the 90’s have mostly dissipated by now. However, nowadays many veteran Israelis are eagerly adopting the Russian hostility towards the Arab-Israeli population.

Therefore it is of no surprise that Ehud Barak now seeks to reseble Russian president Vladimir Putin in an attempt to lure the Russian electorate. In a new broadcast ad, when referring to Arab terrorists, Barak turns specifically to the Russian public: Like you say in your circles, we need to wipe them while they’re on the toilet.

Do you find the ad racist? Is the attempt to market a brutal perspective the only chance to garner the Russian vote, or is it yet another stereotypical approach to politics?