In the 1990s, over 1 million citizens of the former Soviet Union made their way to the Jewish state, changing it and strengthening it dramatically. The current war between Russia and Ukraine, and the increasing repressiveness of Vladimir Putin’s regime, have prompted another wave of immigration. Armin Rosen describes Jerusalem’s efforts to respond to what he calls “Putin’s aliyah.”

Israel, like much of the rest of the world, was not prepared for the consequences of the Ukraine war, which more than doubled the annual number of immigrants to the country and strained the existing absorption infrastructure. . . . “Israel always wants aliyah,” said [the country’s most famous Soviet immigrant, Natan] Sharansky, “but I don’t remember the case where Israel was prepared for a wave of aliyah.”

As [the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration’s director general, Avichai] Kahana put it, “we couldn’t do our job, because we had a new job”—the old job was to help at most 30,000 immigrants build a new life in the Jewish state each year; the new job was to resettle rapidly tens of thousands of people in the midst of the worst European security crisis in generations. Putin also wields the implicit threat of closing the country’s borders, refusing to let Jews emigrate, or targeting Jewish institutions inside the country. The Russian government initiated frivolous legal proceedings against the Jewish Agency last year, a move that effectively shut down the organization’s work in the country.

The blinkered obsession of mainstream American Jewish organizations with their own supposedly special role in Israel’s internal political crises stands in sharp contrast to the community’s engagement with the needs of Russian olim at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement in the 1980s and 1990s.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.