The State of Israel did not do everything it could to open its doors to refugees from Ukraine following the war with Russia. Israeli policy, as dictated by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, was wrong, when it was decided on a quota of accepting a few thousand out of millions of refugees. In light of the friendly relations between the countries, it could be expected that the government would be more attentive, especially after we experienced a situation of refugees and suffered from pogroms committed in our own people.”
The speaker is former MK Dr. Roman Bronfman (68), born in Ukraine and an expert on this country, who adds and says: “The impression received is that Israel chose the wrong side. It took time for this to improve, with Yair Lapid, first as foreign minister and then as prime minister The government took a firmer step towards Russia and condemned the attacks by the Russians in Ukraine, with murders of the civilian population. It is to be regretted that the State of Israel is not preparing for the possibility of a mass immigration wave from there.”
For about a decade, Bronfman was a member of three assemblies and today he presents himself at the age of 68 as a “full” pensioner. When he sees the lists of candidates for the Knesset in the upcoming elections, he says: “It didn’t evoke longing in me at all compared to the 14th Knesset, to which I was first elected in ’96 and in which personalities like Sharon and Peres served. Today, some come to the Knesset from social networks, and this is how it seems. People are chosen who have no record of public activity.”
You don’t sound eager to get back into the ring.
“Indeed, there were inquiries to me, but for me it was out of the question. In my opinion, everything in its time, what’s more, I was hired by my retirement from political life in 2006, which allowed me to write a book about the absorption of a million Jews from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s (with the former journalist Lily Galili, YBA). That’s how it is, you have to give room to other people.”
Being 52 years old at the time, were you not hasty in your retirement from the political arena?
“I may have been a bit hasty, but I don’t regret it.”
Israel is different
He was born in Chernivtsi in southwestern Ukraine. “I grew up in a city with a rich cultural life, where before the Holocaust a third of its residents were Jewish,” he says. “Already at the age of 22 I was a lecturer at the university, a literary critic and director of a large cultural center in the city, but in 1980 I left everything and from Zionism immigrated to Israel with my wife and our eldest son, Zvika, when it was possible to leave the Soviet Union. We arrived in Israel differently than today: Israel is welcoming, with the slogan ‘Great for the Ola, our power increases’. We were surrounded with love and attention, which contributed to our successful absorption in Israel. We went to Haifa. In ’93, after I retired from editing the Russian newspaper ‘Vermia’, I was elected to the city council on the list of Amram Metzna and I was the chairman of Rabin’s information staff among the immigrants from the former Soviet Union. As a member of the city council, I established the authority for accepting immigrants in Haifa, through which we accepted about 100,000 new immigrants until the year 2000.”
A year later, Bronfman was elected vice president of the Zionist Forum, and when its head, Natan Sharansky, was appointed minister, Bronfman was replaced. Fissures between them soon became apparent, with the establishment of “Israel on the Rise”, the then sectoral party of former Commonwealth of Nations, on the background of Bronfman’s identification with the left. He, the chairman of the faction in the Knesset, split from the party and founded the short-lived “Democratic Choice” party.
By the way of the “Zionist Forum”, is Zionism still a passing currency?
“In my opinion, the extreme right has taken over the concept of ‘Zionism’. Today it is mentioned in the context of the illegal settlement established in the West Bank, i.e. the settlements. Thus the concept in its historical sense is disappearing”.
You will agree that the immigrants from the Commonwealth of Nations, who came from communism, did not devote themselves en masse to the left here.
“To be precise, four of the mandates that returned Rabin to power came from former Soviet leaders, but their opinions changed with the wave of terrorism following the Oslo Accords.”
During Ehud Barak’s short period as prime minister, Bronfman was his contact in contacts with Russia: “When a special gathering was held for the millennium, Barak asked me and Meir Shetrit to join him on his trip to New York. While Shatrit accompanied him to meetings with African and Asian leaders, I participated with Barak in meetings with leaders from Europe. One of our meetings was with Putin, so two months into his term as Prime Minister of Russia. He came to her with Lavrov, who was already his foreign minister at the time. At the time, I had an impression of Putin as a gray man with glass eyes, that is, without sight. This is what the KGB members learn from the beginning of their journey there. He mostly listened to Barak and was very emotionally distant, without showing any warmth. If we also take into account the fact that Barak Adam is quite cold, it is understandable what the temperatures were in their encounters. And Peres, who knew how to warm up and melt down every bar of his conversation, did not succeed in doing so with Putin, who I remember as a hard man, who creates an atmosphere of heaviness.”
Later he became a member of the “Democratic Choice” for Meretz. “When I retired from ‘Israel on the Rise,’ it was Tommy Lapid, the head of ‘Shinoi’ at the time, who first suggested that I join him,” he says. “As expatriates of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we had quite a few conversations on historical issues. I considered his offer, but realized that my views were more to the left than a center party as a change. Instead, I joined ahead of the 2003 elections as a separate unit to a joint list with Meretz, and that was my last term in the Knesset.”
You knew Avigdor Lieberman very well.
“Lieberman is an interesting phenomenon of a very shrewd businessman and politician. It should not be forgotten that his case was not closed for lack of guilt, but because the Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein, had difficulty proving his guilt. In my opinion, at least morally this case remains open. However, his contribution to ending Netanyahu’s rule after 12 years may not have whitewashed his actions, but speaks in his favor. Because, if we compare the danger Lieberman poses to Israeli politics to Netanyahu’s danger to the State of Israel as a democratic state, Lieberman’s danger is dwarfed.”
after growth
In 2006, at the end of his third term in the Knesset, Bronfman surprised not only his retirement from political life, but also his transition, an academic with a doctorate in Russian and Slavic studies from the Hebrew University, into the world of business, when he founded a real estate company with his son, Zvika. “I wouldn’t say it was a huge success, but I learned a lot,” he sums up briefly.
So I remind him of their prestigious purchase of the National Insurance House in Masrik Square in Tel Aviv. “We wanted to leave the building intact, but it didn’t work and a residential building was erected in its place,” he recalled.
Let’s understand, did you manage to get rich?
“What a way to get rich. This is a fund, most of whose funds were not my personal. You might be surprised, but to this day I live in a rented apartment and I don’t have my own apartment. I don’t see it as a great disgrace.”
Out of principle you don’t have your own apartment?
“They are out of principle, they are due to the inability to purchase an apartment in Tel Aviv, whose apartment prices do not reflect their true value.”
Back to Ukraine: Did you watch the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that has been raging between it and Russia for eight months?
“Here I was in the stubborn minority with Lieberman, unfortunately, who was sure until the last moment that Putin would not do such an act. Despite all the intelligence assessments, this was not accepted in our minds as an option. Perhaps thinking that brotherly nations cannot get involved in such a war. In the end, he opened it like Hitler’s attack against the Soviet Union in 1941. What boils the blood is not only the thousands of dead on both sides, but the copying of the tactics of the Third Reich, which we believed would never return.”
What is the explanation for the weakness at the beginning of the war of Ukraine, which in terms of the size of its territory is the fourth in Europe, when only Russia has a larger army of its own on the continent?
“Ukraine does have a large army, but it is disorganized and poorly equipped, which was not prepared for such a war. Now, the trend is reversing considerably.”
And President Volodymyr Zelensky?
“Unlike his predecessors, I don’t know him, but his parents and I have mutual friends, who are a well-known family of professors. Zelensky is a surprise. Someone who was a comedian was elected president of Ukraine and is successful in fulfilling his role, when his country stands at the head of the defense of the free world.”
Bronfman lives in Tel Aviv, married, father to Zvika and Zahar and grandfather to four grandchildren. He has a collection of antiques, with which he started back in Ukraine, and a collection of Israeli ceramics. As a retiree, as he calls himself, he has the necessary leisure for this. When asked how retirement came early to jump on him, Bronfman replies: “It’s a matter of combinations of fate. I reached the peak of my career at a very young age – in academia, journalism and politics. After rapid growth, comes extraction.”