Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, declared that the struggle for the rights of Soviet Jews and Israel’s struggle for continued independence and security in the Middle East are one and the same. He denounced the Soviet Union and its “unholy coalition of terrorism and subversion” in the Middle East and Africa not only as a menace to Israel but to “the stability of every Western vestige of influence in that area.”
The envoy also stated that Israel’s attitude, peace plans and ideas for peace “have been grossly misrepresented” and that Israel’s response to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem “was greater in its substance than what we have received.”
Dinitz made his remarks yesterday in an address at the closing session of the national leadership conference of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) here. “There were in the past and there probably will be in the future, attempts to separate” the struggles of Israel and of Soviet Jews, he said. “But these attempts were futile in the past and will be futile in the future because the battle is one–it is the battle for Jewish independence, Jewish survival, for Jewish dignity and Jewish unity.”
He continued: “It is easy to find, sometimes, ‘simple solutions’ in both of these struggles. . . convenient solutions. . . even popular solutions that would produce for all of us good editorials…” However, he said, “This is not the road Jews have ever taken in their long journey through history. That route was taken by many other civilizations and they paid the price for their popularity in their disappearance.”
Dinitz said he did not doubt “that the Soviet authorities’ approach to this problem is part and parcel of their general policy in global terms as well as Middle Eastern terms. It is perhaps the most appalling of all aspects of the problem when one realizes that the cruelest regime is not hesitating to use human life and human dignity and human suffering at the expense of advancing their own political cause.”
CITES ROLE OF SOVIET UNION
He charged the Soviet Union with “supporting every radical element in the Middle East and Africa. . . trying to undermine not only Israel’s security but the stability of every Western vestige of influence in that area.” According to Dinitz it is not “a coincidence that every time we read in the papers that Castro has paid a visit to the Soviet Union, within 30 days we read that Yasir Arafat has paid a visit to the Soviet Union. . . I have no doubt in my mind that the Soviets are using the Cubans and others in Africa in the same way that they plan to use the PLO in the Middle East.” Dinitz added: “There is, therefore, an unholy coalition of terrorism and subversion directed from the same source that wants to subvert every possibility for a peace agreement in the Middle East.”
The Israeli diplomat said he was optimistic that peace can be achieved if the parties involved resume negotiations. “We (Israel) have been grossly misrepresented as to our attitudes, as to our plans, as to our ideas for peace,” Dinitz said. “That is not to say that we have not committed any mistakes. . . we are fallible. . . but we have a central direction that leads us.”
He said that Israel has always wanted peace and “never denied the rights of our Arab neighbors as they have denied ours and most of them continue to deny our rights to this very day. . . So no matter what we would do subsequent to the psychological breakthrough committed by Sadat, we view as a . . . small response when in a sense what we responded was greater in its substance than what we have received.”
In an earlier address to the NCSJ conference, Sen. Robert Dole (R. Kan.) suggested that the U.S. Administration and Congress could affect policy changes in the Soviet Union in the direction of human rights by various means, including linking federal funding for foreign travel by American scientists to the adherence to human rights by the host countries. “The application of this suggestion need not be directed only toward the scientific community,” he said.
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.
