Epstein files: Ex-Israeli PM urged Putin to send ‘one million’ Russians to dilute Palestinian presence

 Ehud Barak also appears to disparage Jews who arrived from Arab and Muslim countries after the creation of Israel in 1948, saying Israel can now be 'selective'

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaking at an event in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 25 July 2019 (Jack Guez/AFP)

By Elis Gjevori

Published date: 4 February 2026 13:18 GMT | Last update: 2 days 19 hours ago

A secret recording has captured former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak telling convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that he lobbied President Vladimir Putin for “one more million” Russians to emigrate, aiming to reshape Israel’s demographics and dilute the Palestinian presence.

“I used to tell Putin, always, what we need is just one more million to change Israel in a dramatic, dramatic manner, the million Russians,” Barak is heard saying in the recordings released last Friday.

Barak, whose family is from Poland and Lithuania and later moved as settlers to Palestine, says in the recording made on 14 February 2015 that Israel should now “control the quality” of future Russian settlers.

Roughly one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union moved to Israel in the 1990s, but by 2005 less than half were Jews or considered Jewish under orthodox law.

In remarks set to deepen long-running divisions inside Israel between secularists and convervatives, Barak sketches a plan “to break the monopoly of the orthodox rabbinite on marriage and funerals and whatever, and the definition of a Jew, and accept, open in a sophisticated, subtle manner, open the gates from [sic] massive... conversion into Judaism”.

Many Russians could settle in Israel without conversion being made a “precondition”, Barak says, but adds: “under the social pressure of the need, especially of the second generation, to adapt. It will happen. And we can control the quality.”

Barak also appears to disparage Jews who arrived from Arab and Muslim countries after the creation of Israel in 1948, implying their presence was treated as an unavoidable necessity.

Israel’s founders, largely white Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, did what they could by taking Jews “from North Africa, from the Arabs, from whatever”, Barak says.

“Now we can be selective and I think… [a] much more open kind of mind about turning to the Jew. We can easily absorb another million,” he adds.

Israel’s Ashkenazi leadership has a long history of looking down on Jews from the Arab and Muslim world, often treating them as inferior.

Equality only for Druze and Christians

Barak says the earlier wave of Russian immigration in the 1990s and early 2000s “changed Israel in a dramatic manner”, adding that “young… girls who can't talk” also came, with Epstein heard chuckling in the background.

In the Epstein files, it is revealed that many young women – particularly from Russia – who have been reported as unable to speak English were trafficked to rich and powerful people.

Barak’s push for importing white Russians sits within a wider obsession with demographic dominance, aimed at diluting Palestinian presence inside Israel’s 1948 borders.

Epstein files: FBI memo says Israel ‘compromised’ Trump, Epstein had Mossad ties

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“Even within the borders of smaller Israel, there is still an issue. And I think the Arabs [Palestinian citizens of Israel] are growing slowly. They were 40 years ago, they were 16 percent and now they are 20 percent,” says Barak.

He then spells out a hierarchy of who deserves equality inside Israel.

“We should be able to… provide equality, first to the Druze, they are about one percent, they are totally Israelis in their behaviour,” says Barak about the religious minority who have been drafted into the state’s mandatory military service since the 1950s, unlike Muslim and Christian Palestinian citizens of Israel.

“Then we should take the Christian… minority, they're about another two percent. They… have an education system which is better than ours,” he says.

Epstein and Barak had a decade-long relationship. Barak visited Epstein’s New York townhouse more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017.

In a separate FBI memo in the Epstein file, it was reported that “Epstein was close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and trained as a spy under him,” the memo adds.

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