Hypocrisy over ‘Replacement’ Rhetoric in the Immigration Debate

Much spittle and ink has been spilled over the use of the phrase “Great Replacement” to describe America’s post-1965 immigration wave and its numerical effects on old-stock citizens (and not just the white ones). But replacement can and does happen; it’s really just a question of numbers. And when it suits them, the Left actually agrees.

While there are plenty of examples of the Left using replacement rhetoric (urban gentrification or Chinese migration in Tibet come to mind), Palestine-sympathizers, in particular, have been deploying it for decades, specifically to decry the Israeli government’s “use” of diaspora Jewish immigrants and, post-October 7^th, foreign guest-workers, to “replace” Palestinians.

Immigration and demography in Israel in general should be a fascinating topic for CIS supporters. Amazingly, for instance, in just one year following the fall of the Soviet Union, the tiny sliver that is Israel took in a whopping 400,000 Jews from the former empire. Combined with some early Soviet immigrants in the 1970s, like dissident Natan Sharansky, this wave equated to 21 percent of all Israeli Jews at the time, surely making it one of the biggest voluntary population transfers in modern times – today, Soviet-era Jews are 1.1 million of the country’s 9 million population, which has doubled since 1990.

Conservative Israeli politicians, at the time, were excited at the arrival of potentially anti-communist and right-wing voters from the Soviet Union who, they assumed, would be less open to an Arab settlement (yes, immigration can affect electoral outcomes), while economists fretted over the population surge’s effects on workers’ wages (yes, it can affect wages too). Apparently neither really happened, as Soviet-era Jews proved to be more concerned with building new lives and, due to their superior science and technology educations, wages among vulnerable Israeli workers did not change much.

But their sheer numbers were certainly viewed as an “existential threat” by Palestinian activists on the Left at the time. For instance, the left-wing Middle East Research and Information Project at the time openly fretted about the kind of connection between immigration and political clout that Republicans would be immediately attacked for if voiced today, writing:

From a demographic point of view, the immigration of Russian Jews in large numbers is destined to decrease the weight of the Arab minority… In certain areas of the country where Arabs are in a majority, the arrival of Jewish immigrants in substantial numbers is likely to tilt the balance.

Elsewhere, we have slightly more-on-the-nose language:

The arrival of Russian immigrants… must be added to the long list of Israeli occupation practices intended to dispossess the Palestinians of their land and resources… The arrival of Russian Jews has clearly buttressed the Israeli policy of submerging the Arab part of Jerusalem.

And fast forward to today, we have New York-based Al-Shabaka, a “Palestinian policy network”, using stronger language still, writing that Russian emigres were part of a:

[R]ecurring pattern in which Israel summons, exploits, expels, or replaces the Palestinian workforce based on its needs. This calculated approach, as the brief argues, is designed to systematically dismantle Palestinian political, economic, and social structures, ultimately advancing the goal of Palestinian erasure. [Emphasis added.]

In the same policy brief, we also are told: “[after] the First Intifada [] Israel imposed severe restrictions on the indigenous population and began replacing Palestinian workers with immigrants from the former Soviet Union.” [Emphasis added.]

Many more such examples of “replacement” rhetoric in this context can be found.

What Al-Shabaka was really focusing on in its policy brief was an announcement from the Israelis following the October 7^th attack that over a hundred thousand Palestinians would have their permits to work in Israel and the settlements revoked and be “replaced” by foreign workers, chiefly from Sri Lanka, China, India, and Thailand.

What makes the politics around immigration and demographics in Israel even more interesting is that Israeli Jews also deploy similar replacement language. Due to their relative fecundity, Palestinians have been referred to by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and others as representing a “demographic bomb” for the country and, like Palestinians themselves, they too see foreign workers as a similar threats to their own demographic balance – which is why foreign workers cannot gain citizenship even if they marry an Israeli.

Fascinatingly, this demographic worry among Israeli Jews has even been applied to the Soviet Jews themselves, many of whom were not born to Jewish mothers, eat pork, push more civilly- rather than religiously-minded policies and, therefore, may not be “Jewish enough”. Meanwhile, other Jewish Israelis worry about the “threat to the nation’s survival” apparently represented by the surging ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, population, due to their low employment and education-attainment rates, and unwillingness to join the army.

Both Palestinians and Israeli Jews see replacement-levels of foreign migration and other demographic changes as an existential threat. One might assume all groups with a sense of themselves do too. Yes, immigration can lead to demographic change, demographic change can lead to political and social change, and sometimes people do not feel the need for such change. Apparently, when they want to admit it, at least, the Left knows this as well.