In 2022, as Russia’s war with Ukraine sent tens of thousands of new immigrants to Israel, Avigdor Liberman, leader of Yisrael Beytenu, issued a statement that drew mixed reactions from both Russian and Ukrainian interest groups. “I am not for Russia, I am not for Ukraine, I am for Israel,” he said.
The remark came at a time of political change both outside and inside his party. It turned the spotlight on his long-standing balancing act between ethnic politics and nationwide concerns.
Since its founding in 1999, Yisrael Beytenu has been more than a political party. It has served as the main representative for Israel’s Russian-speaking community, backed by immigrant Israeli voters from the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries.
While other “Russian” parties have disappeared, Yisrael Beytenu has “survived and thrived,” according to Larissa Remennick, professor of sociology and anthropology at Bar-Ilan University. For years, the party secured a notable share of Russian-speaking votes, often eclipsing Likud among this group.
Political scientist Ze’ev Khanin calls Yisrael Beytenu’s formula a “national-sectoral” identity – a “Russian party with an Israeli accent.” Liberman has woven the group-specific concerns of immigrants from the FSU into a broader national discourse, appealing both to his base and to the wider electorate.
But Sergei Poliak, a political analyst, argues that this balance still fundamentally depends on the migration cycle. “Liberman exists and develops as a party only thanks to repatriates from Russian-speaking FSU countries,” he said. In his view, the party’s growth directly tracks with immigration flows: “if you build a correlation… then you will see that the growth of mandates for Liberman will certainly correlate with the influx of repatriates from Russia.”
The strength and weakness of Yisrael Beytenu
ACCORDING TO some critics, the “Russian accent” of Yisrael Beytenu is both its asset and its weakness. Many in the FSU community see “one of their own” in Liberman’s leadership, while veteran Israelis often express suspicion toward the party’s Russian imprint. Back in 2019, journalist Lily Galili outlined Liberman’s next challenge: “strengthening the nationwide dimension of [his] party without losing his Russian base.”
Fast forward to the post-2022 migration wave, the arrival of nearly 100,000 Russian-speaking immigrants is putting that balance to the test. Many newcomers arrive with urgent needs – housing, jobs, and navigating life in Israel – yet Liberman has refrained from making high-profile endorsements explicitly in support of these new olim.
For Khanin, the fundamentals remain unchanged: “Liberman still represents an internal policy position that resonates with repatriates from the ’90s, the 2000s, and the 2020s.” In a recent paper for the Begin-Sadat Center, he argued that Soviet and post-Soviet heritage matters “less than Israeli experience, contrary to stereotypes.”
Across all aliyah waves, he claims, Russian-speaking immigrants have largely “integrated into Israeli society and adopted its dominant values and political beliefs,” meaning their interests are not significantly different from those of the general electorate. However, they present their own vision of how to solve not only community-centred issues, but also nationwide ones.
The bigger shift, Khanin notes, is in the national agenda itself. “If, say, 14-15 years ago [the agenda] was mostly a left-right divide, now, as we see with the exhaustion of the Arab-Israeli conflict in its conventional form as a main topic, the focus is on civil and economic issues.” That shift aligns neatly with Liberman’s priorities: “The big issue inside the broader right–centrist camp is the idea of Israel as a Jewish democratic state – while ‘Jewish’ means national rather than religious.”
POLIAK COMPLICATES that picture. While he agrees that older immigrants remain a stable voting bloc, he stresses generational turnover: “for some people it works forever… they will vote for Yisrael Beytenu until the end of their days. And the younger people will pick up Hebrew faster… in two to three years, relatively quickly, they figure out what’s what, and they start voting quite consciously.”
Where Khanin sees continuity across decades of aliyah, Poliak suggests potential changes in Liberman’s electorate as younger voters assimilate more quickly and shift their loyalties.
Liberman’s nationwide concerns do not indicate a departure from his FSU-backed electorate; for instance, Poliak stresses that “the influx of migrants does not create an imbalance between [Israel’s] interest and the interest of Liberman.” However, as his platform becomes more concentrated on wider national concerns, the question is twofold: whether the “ethnic” aspect of politics is still in demand, and whether parties like Yisrael Beytenu will continue to cater to it.
Khanin believes Israeli identity is defined by “postmodernism and multiculturalism” – being Israeli means belonging to the nation while also identifying with a subgroup that distinguishes one community from another. At its core, this is the balance that parties like Yisrael Beytenu seek to strike. In the face of critics accusing Liberman of “splitting society” – whom Khanin dismisses as “clueless about Israeli political sociology, propagandists, or provocateurs” – Yisrael Beytenu plays a dual role: a national actor with a sectoral edge.
Yet Poliak’s cautionary note suggests that this dual role may be less durable than it appears, considering changing generational voting patterns. As older repatriates remain loyal but younger generations integrate more quickly, the party’s niche could narrow over time. Yisrael Beytenu, then, stands at an uncertain intersection: sustained by immigration flows, yet tested by assimilation and shifting national priorities.