Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, last night urged inclusion of the Soviet Union in the Middle East process, but only after Moscow resumes diplomatic relations with Israel.
“I do not think that the peace process can achieve any permanent results so long as the Soviets camp outside the tent, ” Bronfman told some 800 persons attending the opening ceremony of the WJC’s 50th anniversary plenary assembly at the Jerusalem Theater.
“The road to peace runs not only through Washington, but also through Moscow,” he stressed. But he warned that “clearly, there can be no seat at any Middle East table for the USSR if it does not have full diplomatic relations with Israel.” He said that some Arab states have urged Moscow to take this step.
Bronfman said there was good reason to hope that the improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union will broaden to include talks about Mideast peace. He said they should also cover human rights.
DIFFERS WITH NCSJ LEADER
Bronfman took issue with a statement by Morris Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), who in a recent interview with The New York Times said that if conditions are not improved for Soviet Jews, American Jews will demonstrate against the arms negotiations.
“We reject any linkage between arms control and the Soviet Jewry issue,” Bronfman said. “We have not, and we will not, make one dependent on the other.” He said an arms agreement will benefit all mankind, including Soviet Jewry.
Jerry Goodman, executive director of the NCSJ, who is attending the conference, was upset by this statement. He said that the NCSJ position is the same as was stated to President Reagan when Abram, Bronfman and others met with him at the White House last September.
Goodman said this was, that while there was no formal linkage there is a linkage in that American public opinion will not accept an arms agreement if the Soviet Union cannot keep its agreements on human rights.
Bronfman reiterated that the WJC position has always been that the Soviets should allow those Jews who want to emigrate to do so, free the Prisoners of Zion and allow them to go to Israel, and let Jews who want to remain in the USSR be free to practice their religion and pursue their culture without discrimination.
DULZIN:’REPATRIATION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION’
But Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, said “repatriation is the only solution for the two-and-a-half million Jews of the Soviet Union. There is no future for them in the Soviet Union — not as a community, not as a national minority, not as a culture or a religion.”
Dulzin also stressed to the opening ceremony audience that “we must not permit neshira (dropouts) to endanger the exodus. What is at stake is not the freedom of choice of a few, but the future of an entire community.”
Bronfman said he has “half-convinced” the Soviets “that it is in everyone’s best interest to inaugurate direct flights carrying Jewish emigres from Moscow to Tel Aviv.”
Both President Chaim Herzog and Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek urged the need for tolerance and respect for pluralism in their remarks at the ceremony.
“We have been and continue to witness certain phenomena utterly alien to the Jewish people, to our religion and to our tradition,” Herzog said. “These manifestations of intolerance and fanaticism are sometimes imported from abroad, often encouraged, and indeed financed from abroad. The recurring crises they bring about can also have a most damaging effect on world Jewry as a whole.”
Herzog urged the WJC to address itself “not only to the disabilities suffered by Jews, but to the proliferating menace which is coming to expression within the Jewish people. We must work together to save our society, our ethical tradition, our future in the true spirit of our people.”
Kollek, noting that Jerusalem was the “indivisible capital of Israel, ” said it can remain so ” in comfort only if it shows tolerance and a feeling for plurality.” He said this is not to please anyone else but “we owe it only to ourselves” and to world Jewry.
“What we want to have for Soviet Jewry, a minority … we have to give to minorities here,” Kollek said. “We cannot be in a position where people will ask you when you fight for the rights of Jews everywhere why don’t they do the same in Israel, why don’t they do the same in Jerusalem.”
Kollek praised Bronfman and his three predecessors as WJC presidents for being men of “independent views” with a “willingness and the courage even to criticize the State of Israel.”
The ceremony opened last night with Israeli youngsters, including recent arrivals from Ethiopia, carrying in the flags of participating countries. Dr. Gerhart Riegner, co-chairman of the WJC Governing Board, presented the Nahum Goldmann Medal to Yitzhak Korn, chairman of the WJC Israel Executive Committee, who participated in 1936 in the founding assembly of the WJC in Geneva.
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.
