06 June 2007
A leader of Germany’s Jews has criticized the Israeli government for its move to encourage more immigration to the Jewish state. Stephan Kramer, secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, sent a letter last week to Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert saying he would request the German government’s help in preventing Israel from encouraging Jews to make emigrate to Israel, according to the ‘Ha’aretz’ newspaper.
Kramer’s letter follows an Israeli government decision to widen the scope of the Nativ immigration assistance program to include Germany as well – a place where an estimated hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union now reside. Currently, each year about 100 Jews from Germany make aliyah. Earlier this year, Kramer had told Britain’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ newspaper that Germany’s Jewish “renaissance has drawn more Jewish immigration than Israel.”
