Some 30,000 Israelis, many of them new immigrants from the Soviet Union, came Saturday night to the open air amphitheatre at the Tel Aviv park to express their solidarity with the struggle of Soviet Jews and to listen to Premier Menachem Begin call on all Western nations to boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980.
Supporting the call of British Foreign Minister David Owen to consider a boycott of the Olympics and to transfer the games to the West, Begin said that a country that throws idealists into prison does not deserve the honor of holding the Olympics on its territory.
Begin called on the Soviet government to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel and to cease its policy of depriving prospective immigrants of the right to work. “You shall not succeed in eliminating the renewed Zionist movement in Russia,” Begin declared. “You will bring on yourself difficulties if you continue to maltreat our people. Let my people go to the Jewish State and free the Prisoners of Zion.”
He also called on Jewish youth the world over not to rest and not to remain quiet but demonstrate wherever there is a Soviet Embassy or Mission “in the name of the Human Rights Charter and the Helsinki Declaration.” Begin devoted part of address to greet Israel Zalmanson in the audience. Zalmanson, who arrived in Israel earlier this month, spent eight years in Soviet jails following the first Leningrad trial in 1970. (By Yitzhak Shargil)
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.
