Israel Wants to Direct Aid Only to Soviet Jews Intent on Aliyah

Israel has tightened the criteria it uses in disbursing financial assistance to Jews wishing to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

That was confirmed this week by Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the World Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency Executive. He said the move was part of an ongoing “effort to battle against neshira,” and not a revolutionary change in policy.

Neshira is the Hebrew word for “dropout.” It refers to the increasing number of Soviet Jews emigrating on Israeli visas who decide to settle in countries other than Israel.

The neshira rate hovered around 90 percent last year, becoming a source of embarrassment and frustration for Israeli officials, who have traditionally viewed the Soviet Jewry movement as a Zionist cause.

Dinitz’s disclosure, unusual because the aid program has always been clandestine, came as Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir voiced a prediction Tuesday that Israel is on the threshold of a large wave of aliyah (immigration) from Eastern Europe.

The premier, touring settlements in the Jerusalem area, spoke of many thousands of well-educated and highly qualified persons likely to arrive here in the future “for objective reasons.”

He did not specify the countries concerned, though he appeared to be speaking mainly about the Soviet Union itself. He said the Israeli economy must brace itself to meet this challenge.

Shamir said that a new wave from the East might well generate more aliyah from Western countries, too.

BUCHAREST-BOUND JEWS ONLY?

Dinitz and other officials indicated that Israel has long sought to direct Israeli financial assistance to persons intending to end their journey in Israel, and not in other countries. The latest tightening of criteria is a further step in this direction, they said.

Their confirmation of media reports on this matter represents the first time that officials have referred publicly to the aid, which is disbursed prior to emigrants’ departure from the Soviet Union.

The aid, in the order of 700 to 800 rubles per emigrant, has been paid since the early 1970s to help the emigrants meet the bureaucratic costs of processing their departure.

In the past, applicants filled out forms at the Dutch Consulate in Moscow, which handled Israeli interests in the absence of any formal Israeli consular presence in the Soviet Union.

Now this function has been transferred to the Israeli consular mission in the Soviet capital, enabling Israeli officials to tighten eligibility criteria so that they conform more closely to the end-destination of the recipients.

According to a report in the daily newspaper Ma’ariv, the aid will be granted only to Jewish emigrants booking flights to Bucharest, Romania, virtually all of whom proceed directly to Israel. This, however, has not been officially confirmed.