The organizers of Sunday’s demonstration for Soviet Jewry on the National Mall expressed satisfaction Monday at the large turnout, but stressed that the real test of whether the Washington Mobilization was a success will come at the summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Hereafter the Soviets can never say that this is a small movement or is a movement confined only to Jews,” Morris Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jews, the organizing agency for the demonstration, said at a news conference here.
“It is a national movement” and the crowd Sunday included Americans and Canadians of all races and religion,” Abram said.
Gorbachev arrived in Washington late Monday afternoon and begin three days of talks with Reagan on Tuesday. The first major event is expected to be the signing of the INF treaty eliminating intermediate range nuclear forces.
Abram stressed that most American Jews support the treaty, but declared “the summit will fail” if it “does not make significant headway” on other issues, including human rights, as Gorbachev and Reagan said they would when they announced the summit date.
ONLY MODEST GAINS
Secretary of State George Shultz said Monday that the United States expects only modest gains in the areas of human rights and regional issue. “We will make progress, but it won’t be enough,” Shultz said in a television interview on NBC’s “Today” show.
Abram stressed that in addition to emigration, the Soviets must also allow Jews to practice their religion freely, teach Hebrew and form communal organizations. He also urged an end to the jamming of Voice of Israel broadcasts.
Abram, who also serves as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, received a cable Monday from Premier Yitzhak Shamir of Israel, praising Sunday’s rally.
“The great demonstration that you and your colleagues held in Washington is a testimonial of the strength and the moral weight of American Jewry and of the unity of the Jewish people,” Shamir wrote.
“Your moving cry, ‘Let My People Go,’ echoed throughout the corners of the world,” Shamir said.
“It brought home to many governments and peoples the resounding message that the Jewish people will not stand by and permit their brethren in the Soviet Union to be cut off from their people and from the land of their forefathers,” he added.
Jacqueline Levine, chairperson of the Washington Mobilization, said at the Monday news conference here that the rally is “a remarkable demonstration of the unity of our community and tells us that on significant and crisis issues, we are indeed one.”
GORBACHEV REMARKS DREW CROWD
Levine said that until last week, the organizers had only expected about 75,000 people to participate. But she noted that about 250,000 were there Sunday, which she credited to Gorbachev’s Nov. 30 interview on NBC-TV in which he took a hard line on emigration.
“Gorbachev’s interview aroused people’s ire and the desire to be part of something that could possibly change the course of history,” she said.
The Voice of America broadcasted the demonstration to the Soviet Union. Yuli Edelshtein, a former refusenik, said he spoke to people in Moscow who expressed their appreciation for the turnout.
Another former refusenik, Ida Nudel, said she would never have believed that there could be such a large number of demonstrators for Soviet Jewry.
SOVIET’S REACTION NONCOMMITTAL
One of the first official Soviet reactions was a noncommittal one Monday from Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, who shared a briefing with White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.
“I don’t think it was an anti-Soviet demonstration,” Gerasimov said when he was asked for his view. “It was a demonstration on one issue, on the issue of Jewish emigration. As I understood it, those who took part in the demonstration wanted to make the point and I think they did.”
But Tass, the official Soviet news agency, denounced the freedom rally. Speeches accusing Moscow of anti-Semitism are “monstrous for their unfairness” and grossly distorted reality, the news agency said Monday.
The Arab League also protested. “For the United States to inject this issue at this time will further add fuel to the already explosive situation in the Mideast,” Clovis Maksoud, the Arab League representative in the United States, said in a statement released here.
Several participants at Monday’s news conference expressed concern that the summit could result in a new trade agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States, particularly since Commerce Secretary C. William Verity has arranged for Gorbachev to meet with 60 American business leaders on Thursday.
NO RELAXATION OF JACKSON-VANIK
Abram stressed that the Jewish community is united in opposing any relaxation of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which links most-favored nation benefits for the USSR with increased emigration, unless the Soviets allow at least 50,000 Jews a year to emigrate as it did in 1979. The Reagan administration is on record as opposed to any softening of the legislation.
But Pamela Cohen, president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, stressed that the concern was over providing the Soviets benefits not covered by Jackson-Vanik, such as untied bank loans.
Cohen called for “linkage” between human rights advances and improved relations. She urged Reagan to tell Gorbachev that the Soviets must “earn the economic, trade, cultural and technical advantages which they desire so badly and they will earn them by demonstrating a willingness to change and not by simply denying their need to change.”
Taking a similar line was Helene Drobenare, Soviet Jewry chairperson for the North American Jewish Students Network. She said that if Reagan agrees to increased trade without such linkage “Dec. 7 will be once again a day that will live in infamy.”
Edelshtein said that the Soviets have themselves raised the linkage issue. He explained that refuseniks have been told in Moscow that if agreements are reached with the United States they might be allowed to emigrate sooner.
Martin Stein, national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, pledged that the struggle will continue until “every Jew who lives in the Soviet Union is permitted to live freely as a Jew or to leave freely” for Israel.
(Tel Aviv correspondent Hugh Orgel also contributed to this report.)
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.
