Jerusalem Post - 01.20.2005

Jerusalem Post

Anti-Semitism in Russia causes worry

By JPOST.COM STAFF

The Israeli Foreign Ministry is becoming increasingly worried about the wave of anti-Semitism directed against Jews in Russia. 

Rabbis Alexander Lakshin and Eliahu Fomiuk were attacked by around six men with shaved heads as they were walking in a pedestrian underpass near a synagogue late on Friday with two young children. Lakshin said he had been kicked in the back and hit on the head with a bottle; the children managed to run away. 

Moscow prosecutors said Thursday that three men had been detained on suspicion of beating the two rabbis. 

Sergei Marchenko, spokesman for the Moscow prosecutor's office, said that Dmitry Rozanov, Andrei Maksin and Denis Dubov, their ages ranging from 19 to 26, had been detained and that their involvement in the attack was being verified. 

About a month ago, 40 tombstones in a St. Petersburg synagogue's cemetery were desecrated, according to Army Radio. 

A meeting to reprimand the Russian ambassador to Israel was postponed, fearing to open a second point of contention against the Russians, with Israel's demand that Russia not sell missiles to Syria still relevant. 

The Russian embassy in Tel Aviv condemned the anti-Semitic incidents: "We express our sorrow about the recent events, and we condemn every occurrence of religious hatred." 

Top Jewish leaders in Russia have largely praised the efforts of President Vladimir Putin's government in encouraging religious tolerance, but rights groups accuse Russian authorities of failing to adequately prosecute the perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence. 

Sources close to the Israeli ambassador to Russia criticized the leadership in Moscow for not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism, Army Radio reported. "Sometimes it seems like we're working with drunks." 

Aryeh Levine, Israel's former ambassador to Russia, said the trend is not surprising. "The anti-Semitism in Russia and the USSR was always an endemic disease, a dormant disease, and sometimes there is a breakout. But there are a lot of possible causes for it now: political, economical, psychological and cultural."

With AP