Premier Golda Meir said last night that all figures on Soviet Jewish emigration cited by Leonid Brezhnev to U.S. Senators last week, were incorrect.
Nevertheless, she said it was an achievement for Soviet and world Jewry that the emigration issue had figured in the summit talks last week and that the Soviet Communist Party Secretary had found it necessary to speak to Senators and Jewish leaders about it.
Addressing the opening session of the World Jewish Congress Executive meeting, Mrs. Meir said it was clear from the summit talks that the Jewish emigration issue could no longer remain a purely internal matter in the Soviet Union. She asserted that the Soviets could no longer deny the existence of a Jewish people or a Jewish problem in their midst as they have formerly done.
The Israeli Premier assailed the Iraqi authorities for persecuting the handful of Jews remaining in that country. It was “the height of cowardice,” she said, “to shoot a defenseless Jewish family or kidnap a Jewish man as he walked down the street.”
Referring to Syria, Mrs, Meir claimed the Jews there are subjected to the kind of humiliations which recall the darkest days of the ghetto.
The main part of Mrs, Meir’s speech was devoted to the problem of assimilation in the diaspora. She called on the World Jewish Congress to consider the Issue seriously and to develop, together with Israel, methods for alleviating as simulation.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
