Foreign Minister Abba Eban demanded today the immediate release of all Jews imprisoned in the Soviet Union for wanting to go to Israel. The Knesset echoed him by adopting unanimously a resolution calling for the prisoners’ release and for freedom for Soviet Jews desiring to live in Israel. The Knesset also called on governments, parliaments and enlightened world opinion to join the effort to aid Soviet Jews.
Eban, speaking on the impending trials of Moscow activists Gavriel Shapiro and Mark Nashpitz, charged the Soviet government with having embarked recently on a three-pronged anti-Zionist drive. He charged that the Soviet press was publishing hate articles about absorption difficulties in Israel; that the authorities were jamming Yiddish and Russian broadcasts to the USSR to cut Jews off from their Israeli brethren, even though the broadcasts contain only personal messages and Israeli news and no anti-Soviet propaganda; and that the Soviet authorities were conducting an active terror campaign against Jews. But, said Eban, “Just as these measures have failed in the past, so they will fail in the future as well.”
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