Charlie Biton, the Black Panther MK who was elected on a joint ticket with the Rakah Communist faction, returned from a visit to the Soviet Union over the weekend with the claim that any Jew who wants to leave the USSR may do so.
Biton spent 15 days in Russia with four other Israeli leftists as guests of the Soviet Peace Committee. He said on a radio interview today that he had met with several Jews in Moscow “some of whom want to immigrate and some of whom do not.” However, he said, no one complained that the authorities were preventing their departur. He said he raised the issue with Soviet officials and was told that in principle there is no restriction on the exit of Jews for Israel. “Within a month or two every Jew who wants to leave can do so,” said Biton who is himself an immigrant from Morocco. Biton was favorably impressed with the Soviet Union. “Unlike Israel there are no slums there,” he said.
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