Premier Yitzhak Shamir said Thursday that the plight of Soviet Jews should be considered apart from Israel’s policies toward the Soviet Union and must not be “held hostage” to Israeli negotiations with Moscow. Addressing representatives of the American Council for Soviet Jewry in Jerusalem, Shamir also complained that American Jews are not doing enough to persuade the U.S. to abolish refugee status for Jews leaving the USSR which makes it easy for them to go to the U.S. instead of Israel. Many U.S. Jewish organizations in fact disagree with Shamir on this issue.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.