NCSJ Welcomes Soviet Invitation to Bronfman but Warns of Possible Propaganda Ploy by the USSR

Morris Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, welcomed today the invitation the Soviet Union has made to Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, to go to the Soviet Union.

But he warned that if Bronfman receives only "taken gestures," his visit, scheduled for late March, would serve only for "propaganda" for the Soviet Union rather than be a means of easing the plight of Soviet Jewry.

"I am glad that any representative of any Jewish organization is invited to the Soviet Union to discuss the problems," Abram said at a press conference at the NCSJ office here. But he added that the invitation does not "indicate" the USSR "is going to change its fundamental policy" of restricting Jewish emigration and officially approved anti-Semitism.

"If the Soviet Union intends only to release a few persons," Abram said, "but continues the vast persecution, the nationwide persecution; if it intends to continue to restrict emigration;" if Soviet Jews like Anatoly Shcharansky and losef Begun remain in jail and if the Hebrew language continues to be repressed barring even the printing of Hebrew books on Karl Marx, "then whatever paliative or token gesture they make will be of only propaganda use."

But Abram added that he hoped the conversations Bronfman has "will be substantive and touch all the elements which the Soviet Union should be doing without being asked" because it has signed international agreements such as the Helsinki accords.

In a recent letter to The New York Times, Abram criticized Bronfman for a column in which the WJC leader said the Soviet Jewry issue was turning the Jewish community into "cold warriors."

The press conference and a meeting Abram had later with Secretary of State George Shultz were in preparation for the NCSJ’s day-long "Emergency Action For Soviet Jews" gathering scheduled for Capitol Hill tomorrow. Participants will include members of Congress and a broad spectrum of American religious and ethnic leaders, and will feature a symbolic "prisoner lunch" of potato soup and black bread.

WANTS TO THANK SHULTZ

Abram said he wanted to thank Shultz for keeping his pledge to the NCSJ last year that in all meetings with the Soviet Union, the U.S. would raise the issue of Soviet Jewry, including the meeting Shultz had with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Geneva earlier this month. Lionel Olmer, Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Administration, also raised the issue of Soviet Jewry during recent trade talks in Moscow, Abram said. He noted that Olmer told him he spent an evening with a Soviet Jewish refusenik and found it an "extraordinary experience."

Jerry Goodman, NCSJ executive director, said the NCSJ believes that if there are be improved cultural, scientific and trade relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union, it required if not "explicit, implicit preconditions," that there be improved conditions for Soviet Jews including increased emigration. He said this view is shared by the Reagan Administration.

Abram said the Jackson-Vanik Amendment which links trade to imigration is not written in "concrete" and Jews would not oppose changing the amendment if the Soviet Union would honor the Helsinki accords. But he stressed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment has not been a barrier to emigration but may have assisted it since 51,000 Jews emigrated from the USSR in the year it was adopted. Emigration last year was below 900.

ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-ZIONISM CONTINUES UNABATED

Abram suggested that the coming Geneva talks on disarmament may lead to improved conditions for Jews in the USSR. But he stressed that the persecution of Jews continues now especially against teachers of Hebrew. He noted that when he was a representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1964 he showed the commission a book printed in the Ukraine, "Judaism without Embellishment" which was anti-Semitic.

Last November, in Leningrad, a 27-minute documentary was broadcast on television called, "Hireling and Accomplices" which Abram said was intended to warn Jews to keep away from contacts with people in the West and to turn non-Jews against Jews.

The film, which was shown at the press conference and will be shown again tomorrow, portrays Zionism as an anti-Soviet movement serving Western imperialism and aliya as a means of bringing Soviet Jews to Israel for "cannon fodder for Israel’s contining offensive against the Arab world." American and other Western Jews are portrayed as seeking to convince Soviet Jews to betray their country in return for material rewards.