August 15, 2008

By Anshel Pfeffer

TBILISI - On Wednesday evening, Rossiko Harnavi stood at the entrance to the Israeli Embassy in Tbilisi waiting to receive the longed-for visa that would enable her to immigrate to Israel. After a while, a security guard told her that the consular section was no longer receiving the public, but she could come back the next day. The real reason for this rejection was that Harnavi is a resident of the capital, and at the moment, the beefed-up staff, which remained at the embassy well into the night, was concentrating on applications submitted by Jews who had fled from battle zones, many of them with only the clothes on their back.

About 300 Jewish refugees came into Tbilisi this week from the bombarded city of Gori; most of them have already filed applications to immigrate to Israel. In an accelerated procedure, 140 have already received immigration permits; under normal procedures, they would have had to wait a month. Thirty-four had already boarded planes and landed in their new country by Thursday morning.

Pleas for rescue have also come in from other Georgian cities that have become besieged enclaves in the wake of the Russian army's invasion. But in the country's largest Jewish community, Tbilisi, where more than 10,000 Jews live, no signs of panic are evident as yet. Even Harnavi, a 30-year-old English teacher, said that she does not intend to leave Georgia in the near future. "I just want to have a visa in hand, in case the situation deteriorates and we have to leave soon," she said. "If the situation doesn't change, maybe I will go to Israel in a few months."

According to Harnavi, "80 percent of the Jews are already thinking about leaving," due to fears that the Russian army will reach the capital. The embassy, however, says that only a handful of immigration applications have been submitted by Jews from Tbilisi.

"Nevertheless, we mustn't make light of the numbers," said a Jewish Agency staffer. "During the entire last year, only 200 Jews immigrated to Israel from Georgia. Now, we have received nearly the same number of applications in only two days."

The crisis in Georgia has brought the roses back to the cheeks of senior officials at the Jewish Agency, Nativ (the Liaison Bureau) and the Joint Distribution Committee. In recent years, many people both in the Israeli establishment and abroad have been mulling these organizations' role and whether they even have a right to exist. But suddenly, Georgia's 12,000 Jews - the remnant of a splendid community, most of which has been in Israel for many years already - have become a coveted target. Emissaries have set out from Israel and from locations throughout the former Soviet Union to reinforce the small delegation in Tbilisi. Search teams have been set up, situation rooms have been opened, and some people are already preparing daring rescue plans.

Meanwhile, however, apart from a few hundred who lost their homes in the fighting and no longer have anywhere to go back to, the Jews prefer to remain where they are.

"I'm staying here," declared Georgian Reintegration Minister Temor Yakobashvili, who is responsible for liaison with the separatist areas in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with a dismissive wave of his hand. Yakobashvili, who speaks fluent Hebrew, is a former Zionist leader, but now, he is more representative of members of the Jewish community who are well-connected in Georgia. And no, he does not know of any Jewish friends who are planning to leave.

"This is a very patriotic community that has strong ties to the local culture and society," said a senior Nativ official who came to Tbilisi to reinforce the team that is examining immigration applications and confirming the applicants' eligibility to come here. "Their tendency at the moment is to identify with the rest of the Georgian people in the struggle against Russia. But their determination also derives from the belief that in the end, Russia will not attack the city. If the columns of tanks continue to move forward and Tbilisi is attacked, then we'll see a different picture here, and thousands could arrive at the embassy."

Should that happen, they have plans prepared: An airlift will arrive at Tbilisi, or at some airport in a neighboring country; convoys of buses will transport people to the planes along secured routes; and thousands of Jews will be absorbed simultaneously in absorption centers that will be opened especially for them.

Jewish Agency and Nativ veterans are harking back to the days of Operation Solomon, when 13,000 Jews from Ethiopia were brought to Israel in a single day, and to the panicky start of mass immigration from the Soviet Union, when it was feared that at any moment, the Iron Curtain could fall again, and a thousand immigrants a day were flown to Israel. Everything is ready. Only the Jews, at least for the moment, are not showing up.