Soviet Jewish leaders visiting Israel this week asked Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to give them a voice in setting absorption policy.
They warned that urgent steps must be taken to “prevent a national tragedy.”
The leaders of the Vaad, the confederation of Jewish institutions in the Soviet Union, asked Shamir for an urgent meeting to discuss the establishment of an international coordinating body to cope with “the critical situation in immigrant absorption.”
The Vaad leaders were attending the plenary assembly of the World Jewish Congress, which for the first time included a representative delegation of Soviet Jews, numbering 65 people.
In a letter to Shamir, Vaad leader Michael Chlenov cited recent hunger strikes and protests by immigrants, as well as a camp of homeless immigrants in the Galilee development town of Carmiel, as evidence of worsening conditions for the Soviet newcomers.
“The situation threatens to deteriorate to a social explosion, with unpredictable consequences for aliyah and for the State of Israel,” he wrote.
On Thursday, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz published the results of a survey showing that over half of the Soviet Jews who arrived here during the last six months of 1990 are unemployed.
Only 15 percent of the families who arrived this year have at least one member working, and about 30 percent of them work as domestics.
The survey was conducted last month by the Tatzpit research institute, headed by Dr. Aharon Fein. A representative sample of 615 immigrants who arrived in Israel between September 1989 and March 1991 were interviewed at 40 locations.
IMMIGRANTS ‘HAVE ALMOST NO VOICE’
Chlenov said in an interview that what the Soviet delegation heard this week from immigrants was “very worrying. We were urged by many immigrants to raise these issues, because they have almost no voice. Our voice is important to them.”
The Vaad delegates met for six hours with Jewish Agency leaders to discuss preparations for aliyah made in the Soviet Union and the actual move to Israel, tasks which are handled by the agency. Providing jobs and housing for the mass aliyah is the responsibility of the government.
The Vaad delegates were frustrated that during sessions of the WJC assembly, attended by hundreds of Jewish community leaders from around the world, little time was devoted to aliyah and absorption.
Grigory Kroupnikov, a Zionist leader from Riga, Latvia, said that “the speakers at the assembly keep telling us that the Soviet aliyah is the most important event in Jewish history today. But why, out of a three-day conference, is only an hour and a half devoted to this subject?”
The WJC session on aliyah consisted mainly of speeches by Absorption Minister Yitzhak Peretz and Jewish Agency leaders Mendel Kaplan and Simcha Dinitz. Very little time was left over for questions from the floor, which provoked an angry outburst from the Vaad delegates.
“I don’t understand why we are limited only to a few questions,” said Vaad leader Yosef Zissels of the Ukraine. “Why don’t people want to hear what we have to say? Aliyah and absorption deserves a serious discussion, and not just a few brief questions.”
A Leningrad journalist in the delegation said, “You must explain why the aliyah is not absorbed, why there are no jobs. Perhaps we should stop the aliyah until the people already here are absorbed?”
Finance Minister Yitzhak Moda’i spoke at another session, but did not say anything about what his ministry was doing to create the tens of thousands of new jobs needed to absorb the immigrants. After his speech, he left without answering any questions.
“We are sick and tired,” Chlenov said, “of ministers coming here, talking and then leaving without giving us a chance to say anything.”
The immigrants themselves are also frustrated, and that could have political repercussions.
According to the Tatzpit survey, only 35 percent of respondents polled about their political leanings would support one of Israel’s existing political parties. Sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of creating a separate Soviet party.
On Tuesday, one Soviet immigrant did just that. A little-known immigrant named Yosef Hurul announced he was forming the Zionism, Immigration and Democratic Party, which would focus on problems confronting the immigrant community.
(JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.)
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