Belarusian Jewess from Israel: Changes are inevitable – Charter’97 :: News from Belarus – Belarusian News – Belarus News – Republic of Belarus
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But the walls themselves will not collapse.
For people who have left their native country to resume life in a new place – often from scratch. The topic of who left for Israel arose doubly: the situation here is far from a “peaceful sky overhead”, a long-standing conflict with final periodicity breaks through with hot military outbursts, and then rockets fly, people die.
But even in such cases, immigrants from Belarus in Israel watch not only themselves, but also those who are in Belarus. Perhaps precisely because the price of freedom and independence is very well valued.
About how the elections in Belarus brought together different generations of repatriates, about the brightest actions and the current mood of the diaspora “Solidarity” asked a representative of the RAZAM community. Israel and Belarus Irina Gurevich.
“Video on the night after the elections shocked”
Irina was born in Minsk, but has been living in Israel for a long time. She admits that she was not interested in the Belarusian constitution until 2020.
“But the elections and the brutal repressions that followed them do not remain indifferent to many people from Belarus in Israel, including me.
2020 as a whole has become a turning point for me in terms of activity. Back in March, when the first wave of the “corona” began, my friend Yuri A. (also a former Minsk resident, by the way) opened a Russian-language group on Facebook to help those who are in quarantine, called me and a few other guys to administer it.
In just a few weeks, the virtual project went beyond the social network and grew into a real volunteer network throughout the country.
By the summer of the first wave of the epidemic, the epidemic accelerated, and with it the activity of our anti-coronavirus project curtailed. And then we began to “Belarusian,” recalls Irina.
– The likely significance and close-knit diaspora of Belarusians until the summer of 2020 – or, as in the combination of the song, did you “did not know each other until this summer”?
Yes, I really didn’t know. It turned out that there are many caring countrymen in Israel. Different generations and different turns of aliyah (aliyah – “ascension” during the years of transfer or repatriation in Israel) fall to the action: those who arrived in the last and those who made aliyah in the 90s after the collapse of the USSR.
Belarusians are waiting for immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, as well as native Israelis. There are those who do not approve of our activities, but their voice is thin, those same 3%.
Interestingly, many sabras (native Israelis) before the events of summer 2020 did not know about the government of the Republic of Belarus, although a number of prominent Israeli figures who stood at the origins of the state were born there. But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining, now everyone knows about Belarus, probably.
… The first actions of solidarity among Belarusians, says Irina, took place in the summer of 2020 even before the elections. The idea of the action near the Embassy of Belarus in Tel Aviv Sergei Tikhanovsky. Later, there were several more actions, already more massive, that aroused keen interest and support from the Israelis.
And on election day, a kilometer-long line gathered at the embassy. About five hundred people, Belarusian citizenship, specially arrived in Tel Aviv with different forecasts of the country and patiently waiting for several hours under the scorching sun for the opportunity to cast their vote.
And although not everyone managed to get to the polling station, the embassy, surprisingly, found a clean report that coincided with the exit poll data: the majority of the votes of the population of voters were given to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Then, during August, a powerful wave of actions of solidarity with Belarusians swept across Israel. The most massive actions, which brought together 200-400 people, took place in Jerusalem (where the demonstrators put notes in the Wailing Wall and collected a prayer for peace in Belarus), in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
– Remember that for you personally, a countdown began to be noticed, after which it was impossible to sit and do nothing?
— For me, such a case was in the evening after the elections, when friends in Minsk suddenly stopped being in touch, and disturbing messages appeared on social networks, which led to the Belarusian opposition telegram channels. The video on the night after the election was shocking, and I am a beauty that I cannot remain in appearance from the beautiful.
It seems to me that such a surge of emotions and a desire to act is not a matter of course, because Israel has long been my home, my relatives live abroad and, of course, I have little connection with Belarus. Just childhood memories. They largely define our identity.
My first protest action in the Belarusian protest was participation in the preparation and distribution of petitions to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Just a few days after the elections, we managed to collect about 5,000 signatures!
Further in 2020, there were many other actions: promoting the Belarusian theme in attracting the media, organizing solidarity actions, helping politics, and so on.
“I came to understand that the walls themselves will not collapse”
— In anticipation of 2021 on call Svetlana Tikhanovskaya mass actions of solidarity in support of the Belarusians took place all over the world. In Tel Aviv, we reached the procession with a 9-meter flag on the Mediterranean embankment and ended it at the RB building. Then, during the whole year, there were a number of actions in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And on the anniversary of the elections, a picket and an exhibition of photographs of political prisoners and sacrifices with brief annotations in English took place on Dizengoff Square near the parish. Both the exhibition and the concert with the participation of our beloved actress and singer Ani Khitrik attracted the attention of the Israelis.
In addition to solidarity actions, activists of the Belarusian diaspora wrote about their disagreement with the zone in relation to Belarus. Letters were sent, for example, to a number of politicians before the spring elections, to the former president of the country Reuven Rivlin and a new foreign minister Yair Lapid.
– The last diplomatic and rather detailed answer came, explaining the restrained administration of Belarus. Of course, such a policy does not cover us. But I was pleased that the new minister responded promptly,” said Irina Gurevich. – And he didn’t ignore our appeal, which was typical for the work of the Foreign Ministry in the previous government (in Israel, unlike Belarus, changes in the external environment occur quite quickly).
… In May 2021, for a week, Israel was under rocket fire organized by Hamas from the Palestinian city of Gaza. In one of the attacks, as a result of a direct hit by a rocket on a residential building in Ashkelon, a former Minsker and my namesake Nella Gurevich died …
– I remember well how then, in May, we corresponded with a former classmate, and admitted that we were worried and afraid for each other. How to maintain forces in these wild conditions in order to support the Belarusians?
– In that situation, of course, we, the Israelis, ourselves really needed support, which, unfortunately, we never felt. In Belarusian social networks, there was a lot of criticism of individual to Israel, and sometimes openly anti-Semitic statements, so, to be honest, hands dropped a little. Just at that moment, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya held a zoom meeting with immigrants from Belarus in Israel. This meeting inspired and gave us back the motivation to keep active.
Like many Belarusians, in 2020 and even at the beginning of 2021, we believed that to a large extent, but alas, the reality turned out to be different, more severe. I remember my conversation in the fall of 2020 with a former Israeli politician who supported our appeal to the former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a picket in Jerusalem outside the prime minister’s residence.
He argued that the “flower” revolution will not work, because we are talking about an uncompromising dictator. By the spring of 2021, I also got rid of illusions, having come to the understanding that the walls themselves will not collapse, and it is not known when a new big wave of protest will rise. All my Minsk friends who participated in the protests in 2020, then engaged in underground activities in 2021, have already left Belarus…
Volunteering, says Irina, can be compared to running: a short distance – disappearance is not the same as a long one, and requires completely different priority resources, everything, the availability of free time:
— In 2020, due to the lockdowns, some of us had the opportunity not to work for some time in order to participate in social activities to the fullest. Today the situation is different: most of yesterday’s activists have returned to their main activities. Yes, we react to the bright activity of triggers in social networks as much as possible, we sometimes gather for actions at the embassy, but now people do not come much.
“Change is inevitable sooner or later”
– Has the topic of the Belarusian regime’s attempt to “appropriate” the tragedy of the Second World War in the law “On the genocide of the Belarusian people” developed? There were several scandals when the historian, Holocaust researcher Leonid Smilovitsky, the Belarusian ambassador dared to equate him with the Nazis …
– The topic really received a response in the Jewish media, and the scandal has not yet subsided. Dr. Leonid Smilovitsky, among the well-known researchers of the Holocaust of the Belarusian magazine, spoke out against the law “On the genocide of the Belarusian people.”
This document, firstly, distorts the historical truth and replaces the criminal case of genocide, secondly, devalues the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and thirdly, the law has a punitive focus – it provides a pretext for preventing repressions against modern Belarusians.
The Ambassador of the Republic of Belarus to Israel, Vorobyov, defended the law and attacked Smilovitsky, writing articles in Haaretz about food in propaganda clichés, to which the historian gave an expert response in a new article in the same newspaper.
At the same time, the Jerusalem Post newspaper published an article by the Yad Vashem Scientific Institute-Museum in Jerusalem, a historian Arkady Zeltser: he also sharply criticized the Belarusian audit.
We very much expect that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes a serious danger for dissident Belarusians.
– Some say about everything that is happening in the country: they say, we ourselves deserve it and will happen, others – that we will not be the same, and changes will still happen. Which view do you prefer?
“Change is inevitable sooner or later. Live Belarus!