(Jewish Group) With Putin cracking down on democracy, Russian Jews are increasingly moving to Israel

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Less than a year after he immigrated to Israel from Russia, Dima Eygenson has already voted twice in his adopted country.

In April, Israeli voters cast ballots in an election that resulted in a virtual tie between the longtime incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and political newcomer Benny Gantz. On Tuesday, they were back at the polls because Netanyahu couldn’t cobble together a governing coalition.

“I’m a seasoned voter by now,” Eygenson, a 39-year-old marketing specialist, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“It’s pretty exciting and new to me that voting could actually make a difference, lead to a real change in the country’s fate. You can vote in Russia, but it will make no difference.”

The sense that Russia is growing increasingly illiberal is helping drive a surge of emigration by Jews there to Israel in the past four years. Since 2015, nearly 40,000 of them have arrived in Israel. In the entire decade prior to 2015, only 36,784 Russian Jews had come.

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