Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, believes that the second World Conference on Soviet Jewry held in Brussels last week “will have an effect on the Soviet position toward aliya.” Tekoah expressed this view in a special interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here.
He said, “The conference will undoubtedly influence the Soviet authorities. The Soviet government has paid attention to international public opinion in the past on the question of Soviet Jewry….The Brussels conference is a beginning of a chain of events reflecting (International) interest in Soviet Jewry.”
Tekoah, who is now president of Ben Gurion University in Beersheba and a special advisor to Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, also said he believed that the restoration of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union “is secondary to the question whether there is a freedom of emigration from the Soviet Union.”
He said “The renewal of diplomatic ties can be no more than a touch of cosmetic with no effect on aliya.” Israel, in Tekoah’s opinion, must concentrate its efforts on ensuring aliya from the USSR while leaving aside the question of diplomatic relations with Moscow. In any event, he said, there are no “serious indications” that the Soviet Union is moving in the direction of renewing the diplomatic relations with Israel that it broke during the 1967 Six-Day War.
FUTURE OF ISRAEL IN THE UN
Tekoah said that Israel’s position at the United Nations should continue to be that “Israel will be bound only by resolutions adopted by its agreement.” With regard to Arab attempts to expel Israel from the world organization, Tekoah said “the only way to prevent it will be by demonstrating to them (the Arabs) that it will be detrimental to their own interests.”
He explained that “should the Arabs bring this (expulsion) to a vote, Israel would reconsider its attitude to all UN activities regarding the Mideast situation, including the continuation of the UN peace-keeping forces and any role played by the UN at the Geneva conference.”
Tekoah is visiting the U.S. on a two-week speaking tour on behalf of the United Jewish Appeal and Ben Gurion University. He told the JTA that he has received “many offers” to return to active political life in Israel but “I will weigh the offers when the time is right.” He said that he was, in fact, very much involved in Israeli politics. “I am active in the framework of the Labor Party. I have been elected head of the fund-raising of the party and I appear at least four times a week on behalf of the Labor Party in public gatherings,” Tekoah said.
While in the U.S., the former diplomat will complete final arrangements for the publication of his new book, “In the Face of the Nations,” which includes his major speeches at the UN.
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