Alyah de France: les fonctionnaires israéliens apprennent à dire "Bienvenue"

Les médias américains s'intéressent beaucoup à la vague de départs de nombreux Juifs de France. Départ attribué à la montée de l'antisémitisme et à la crise économique. La manière dont l'affaire Dieudonné (unique en Europe) avec ses ramifications ne fera qu'accentuer ce mouvement.  Tablet, l'un des plus importants journaux en ligne juifs, y consacre encore un article très intéressant. (Lire également ce récit d'une cadre et blogueuse norvégienne qui témoigne d'une alyah très réussie)

Israeli Bureaucrats Learning To Say ‘Bienvenue’ Amid French Immigration Wave. Officials have a plan for recognizing French qualifications—to stop new arrivals from heading back to Europe.

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Karine Aziza, a 29-year-old physical therapist who recently moved to Israel, savors finally settling down. Since childhood, her family has straddled France and Israel, moving back and forth every few years. It was an experience, she says proudly, that endowed her with the necessary chameleon qualities to seamlessly code switch between languages and social mores. Of Ashkenazi and Algerian heritage, Aziza has always balanced various cultural identities while knowing that one day she would return to her “real roots” in Israel.

But when she arrived a year and a half ago—one of thousands of French Jews to join in a new wave of immigration to Israel prompted by rising anti-Semitism and a weak economy in Europe—Aziza discovered that Israel’s labyrinthine bureaucracy was less than interested in making her feel at home. Like other French-trained medical professionals, she was told that her four-year physical therapy degree, and the five years she spent working in her own private practice in Paris, are worthless in Israel.


According to figures by the Jewish Agency and Israel’s Ministry of Immigration Absorption, 2013 marked the first time in many years that French immigration surpassed that from the United States. But Israel’s system of immigrant absorption was designed for “rescue” aliyah, rather than “aliyah of choice,” said Dr. Alain Zeitoun, a spokesperson from the Israel-France Forum, an organization that serves as a vital line of communication between the French immigrant medical community and Israeli government ministries.

Now facing a striking 63 percent upswing in French aliyah last year—and with as many as 42,000 French Jews expected to arrive in the next three years—the Israeli government is taking steps to help Aziza and those like her integrate into the Israeli system. In an effort to accommodate both French immigrants already living in Israel as well as thousands more who have expressed a desire to come, a three-year plan is expected to go into effect in the coming months that will recognize French degrees in the fields of optometry, physiotherapy, and tax consulting—specialties in which French Jews are especially well-represented, both in the existing immigrant community and in France. The program will also help with job placement in the style of Australia’s labor immigration system. LA SUITE.