Audio of former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak talking to Jeffrey EpsteinA convicted sex offender now dead, he has shed light on Israel’s efforts to change the demographics of the occupied Palestinian population by diluting it, and also exposed the underlying racism in Jewish circles.
Barak told Epstein that he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel needed to absorb one million Russian-speaking immigrants, because authorities could be more “selective” and “control quality more effectively” than before.
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The recordings were released last week by the United States Department of Justice in a large volume of files.
The former Israeli leader, speaking in an unscheduled meeting with Epstein, said his country could “easily absorb a million more” Russian-speaking immigrants, an apparent reference to white Slavic peoples.
Prior to the creation of Israel in May 1948 and during its early years, the main sources of immigration were Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews as well as Sephardi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.
Barak, in the audio, appears to insult Sephardi Jews, saying the country did it by taking Jews “from North Africa, from the Arabs, from whatever.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, a large influx of immigrants to Israel from various parts of the country began.
According to official statistics, 996,059 immigrants from former Soviet republics arrived in Israel as of 2009.
His politics have tended to align with right-wing ideologies.
Barak also highlights the deep divide between religious and secular Jews, which continues to eat away at the country.
“I believe we have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate on marriage and funerals and the definition of Jewish,” he said, referring to the religion’s strict liturgical rules.
“(This), in a sophisticated, specific way, will open the door to mass conversion to Judaism. This is a successful country, many will apply,” Barak said.
Barak said Israeli authorities could control the quality of the population “more effectively than our forefathers, the founders of Israel”.
“It was a bailout wave from North Africa, the Arab (world) or whatever. They took whatever came; now, we can be selective,” he said, “we could easily absorb another million. I always told Putin, we need another million.”
Barak said Russians would first come to Israel without preconditions, but added, “under social pressure of necessity, especially to adapt to the situation of the second generation, it will happen.”
Some are welcome, others are not
The Israeli government has actively encouraged immigration to the country for decades. The Americans and French are especially welcome, and many move to illegal settlements and dominate Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, to which they have no previous ties.
As recently as November, the government revealed that new immigrants and returning residents arriving in 2026 will be given a zero-percent income tax rate for their first two years in the country.
According to amendments presented as part of the 2026 state budget, residents who have lived abroad for 10 or more years and new immigrants who immigrate to Israel in 2026 will not have to pay any income tax in 2026 and 2027; Rates will be raised gradually, according to Israeli media.
But a huge wave of immigration to the country in the 1980s and 1990s, when thousands of people from the Beta Israel community immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia, has exposed deep-seated racism.
Beta Israel was widely regarded as the main and oldest Jewish presence in Ethiopia.
These Ethiopian Israelis have faced racism, ostracism and police violence against their communities. Many consider themselves second-class citizens.
However, they have rights that Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel do not have, or are under brutal occupation, as Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been for decades.