The increasingly serious situation of Jewish dissidents and activists in the Soviet Union was discussed at length at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting. The Cabinet called on governments, international institutions and world famous personalities to intervene on behalf of activists who have been tried and sentenced on false charges and those facing trial. Premier Yitzhak Rabin announced that the government was protesting to the Soviet authorities.
The Cabinet heard a report of the recent trial of Iosif Begun who was sentenced to two years in exile within the USSR and the pending treason trial of activist Anatoly Sharansky. It was noted that these events coincided with attacks on Jewish activists and the aliya movement in the Soviet press and television.
Meanwhile, the Weizmann institute of Science has taken up the cause of Dr. Oleg Milstein, 45, a Riga microbiologist who has been repeatedly denied an exit visa on spurious grounds that he is privy to classified information. An Israeli friend of Milstein, Emanuel Yacobson, a doctoral candidate at the Weizmann institute, has launched a campaign to enlist scientists throughout the free world to take up Milstein’s cause. He is urging them to write to Soviet officials because experience has shown that world pressure can only help.
Milstein already has been elected a member of the Israeli Biochemical Association and the American Society of Microbiologists. A number of Nobel Laureates, including David Baltimore, Baruch Blumberg, Arthur Korenberg and Paul Berg have written to Kremlin leaders urging that a visa be granted to Milstein.
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