Simcha Dinitz believes there is a growing tendency among American Jews to accept the position that Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union must be encouraged to go to Israel rather than to the United States.
Dinitz, chairman of the Jewish Agency-World Zionist Organization Executive, said Monday that “many of the American Jewish leaders are having second thoughts about the immigration of Russian Jews to the United States, and there is now a tendency to accept the Israeli position to further the Russian immigration to Israel.”
Speaking at a meeting of the WZO Executive, Dinitz, who recently returned from the United States, said American Jews have become aware that a heavy influx of Russian Jewish immigrants will place a severe burden on their communities, both economic and psychological.
About 90 percent of Jews leaving the Soviet Union opt to settle in countries other than Israel, chiefly the United States.
Dinitz also claimed that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, one of the agencies that helps the Soviet emigres while they wait for entry into the United States, agrees with the Jewish Agency that the transit camp at Ladispoli must be drastically reduced in size.
Ladispoli, an Italian seaside resort near Rome, has become a center for Jews from the Soviet Union waiting for entry visas into the United States.
A sudden cutback in the issuance of American visas last year, mainly because of budgetary constraints, left thousands of Jewish emigres stranded in Ladispoli.
The JDC has heretofore taken care of them, but now, according to Dinitz, it is prepared to withdraw support for Russian Jews appealing an American decision not to grant them visas.
Dinitz also reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has appealed to the administration in Washington to issue U.S. visas to Jews still in Russia, which would eliminate the need for places like Ladispoli.
In addition, the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency are trying to get the Soviet authorities to agree to allow the Israeli consular mission in Moscow to issue visas to Russian Jews.
Most Jews leave the Soviet Union with Israeli visas, but they are issued by the Israel interests section of the Dutch Embassy in Moscow.
The WZO Executive also expressed alarm over the rise of a neo-Nazi party in Hungary, which blames Jews for bringing Communism to that country and for its current economic difficulties.
Shimon For Busch, a representative of the Hungarian Immigrants Association in Israel, passed around a pamphlet published by the neo-Nazis in Budapest.
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.
