Israel is relatively confident of continuing U.S. government backing, but it is none too certain it can rely on support from its co-religionists in the Diaspora, Deputy Prime Minister David Levy told a gathering of Jewish leaders here this week.
“The issues of Israel’s security and the dangers we face are clear to the administration,” Levy told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Monday.
“Israel is strong and has brought great advances in the Middle East, and has been a deterrent to forces that were undermining the basis of general security as America sees it.”
“I want to convince you, not the members of Congress. They know this,” Levy said, speaking in Hebrew.
Levy is Israel’s minister of construction and housing, and is nominally the No. 2 figure in Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud bloc. His largely sympathetic Conference of Presidents audience included representatives of less than half the umbrella body’s 46 member groups.
Levy said his current U.S. tour was mainly devoted to discussions on Project Renewal, the Jewish Agency for Israel-sponsored urban renewal program. Levy’s Housing Ministry is a partner in the effort.
A onetime construction worker and union leader who heads his own populist faction in the Likud, the Moroccan-born Levy often is viewed as a key spokesman for Israel’s Sephardic working class.
This has made him a lightning rod for complaints, particularly from his own Sephardic constituency, that government aid to Soviet newcomers comes at the expense of Israel’s working poor.
COMPETING FOR SOVIET JEWS
Levy seemed to allude to that dilemma in defending Israel’s record on aid to Soviet immigrants, which is often blamed for the precipitous decline in the number of Soviet Jews who choose to settle in Israel.
“As minister of housing and construction, I can say that the assistance given to immigrants, especially from the Soviet Union, is the highest given to anyone in the State of Israel,” Levy said.
“We are doing above and beyond. If I take on the responsibility that this massive, highly subsidized assistance is the highest preference, then I think the State of Israel is giving and will give top priority to our brethren from the Soviet Union.”
“But, my friends, there is a paradox,” he said. “Until the miracle comes and those gates are open, we continue struggling. Is the promised land Israel or America? If you compete with us for the Jew coming out of the Soviet Union, it is the end of Zionism.”
The Israeli official appeared to be referring obliquely to the assistance extended by American Jewish organizations to Soviet emigrants who wish to settle in the United States.
The United Jewish Appeal this week launched a special $75 million campaign, half of whose proceeds will aid the resettlement of Soviet Jews in the United States. Much of the rest of the money will be used to fund the absorption of Soviet emigrants in Israel.
On another matter, Levy acknowledged that Israel is faring poorly in world public opinion as a result of the “sophisticated” efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organization to depict itself as “moderate and reasonable.”
Israel rejects the new PLO image, he said, and he called on Diaspora Jews to find the “faith and wisdom” to do the same.
“We face a problem that is different from anything we have faced in the past, something that is very difficult to explain,” Levy said.
“In all our struggles for survival, this is the first time we have faced such a sophisticated challenge. It could be said that the Arabs have learned much from the Jews, while the Jews have forgotten much of what they once knew.”
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