The Knesset called today an other national parliaments to join in action against the exile of Soviet civil rights leader Andrei Sakharov. All factions — with the obvious exception of the Communists — voted in favor of the resolution.
The speakers sharply criticized the USSR for having exiled Sakharov. They also discussed the issue of a possible boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. Likud Knesseter Ronni Milo compared the Moscow games to those of Berlin in 1936, which was designed to glorify the Nazi regime.
Labor Alignment Knesseter Uzi Baram noted that Sakharov himself called on countries of the free world to boycott the Olympics. The call was also shared by Shlomo Gross of the Aguda and Geula Cohen of the nationalist Tehiya movement. However, Cohen expressed disappointment that Israel was actually following an American initiative. Instead, she said, it was Israel which should have initiated the boycott in protest against the repression of human rights in the Soviet Union.
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