Cbs Newsman Says Soviets’ Friendship with Arabs Responsible for Anti-jewish Campaign

“The Russians are really not interested in anti-Israel propaganda as much as simple expansion into the entire area of the Middle East,” according to William Cole, the CBS News correspondent who was expelled from the Soviet Union on June 29. Asked if that policy pits the USSR directly against the United States in the Mideast, Mr. Cole replied. in a CBS Radio network interview scheduled for broadcast Friday: “Yes. it does, very definitely.” Mr. Cole, questioned by network correspondent Alexander Kendrick, added that “the new friendliness between the Arabs and the Russians” is responsible for the attempted repression of Soviet Jewry’s back-to-Israel campaign. Mr. Cole, who was expelled for “activities incompatible with the status of a foreign journalist.” said he believed it was for his “contacts with the dissident movement there.” In an interview scheduled for broadcast Thursday, Mr. Cole noted that the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign has been “so tough, many Jewish leaders say that it’s not anti-Zionist, they say it’s outright anti-Semitic.” Included in the campaign, he said, is “outright job discrimination against Jews.”

The CBS broadcast will include an emigration plea, recorded by Mr. Cole, by Josef Kazakov, the engineer-father of Yasha Kazakov, who conducted an eight-day hunger strike in New York to publicize his family’s and other Soviet Jews’ plight. “We want to go to Israel because we regard Israel as our homeland.” Mr. Kazakov said. “Our son lives there, whom we love very much and without whom we cannot live…We don’t want to criticize or censure our system…We are convinced that eventually we will receive permission to go to Israel, since our desire to live there is guaranteed by Soviet law. by the international obligations assumed by the Soviet Union and by decisions of the United Nations and all countries. The refusal to allow us to emigrate is a mistake, and with the help of international organizations the solution of the question of our departure will be speeded up…”