U.S. Delegate to UN Human Rights Commission Calls for Right of Soviet Jews to Emigrate

Mrs. Rita E. Hauser, United States delegate to the United Nations, told the UN Human Rights Commission hearings today that all member nations should support the rights of minorities in all countries and urged the Soviet Union to take all necessary steps to ensure a “flourishing life” for its Jews and other minorities. In this connection, she said, emigration should not be prohibited. The distinct culture and identity of each minority, she said, enhanced Soviet life, and suppression would greatly affect that life. Mrs. Hauser said she would appeal to the Soviets to review their anti-Israel campaign, which she said was being conducted with Russian Jews “as members of the orchestra.”

The Egyptian delegate to the United Nations, Hussein Khallaf, charged yesterday that Israel’s insistence on referring to Jews in Egypt and other countries as specific entities and of describing such entities as “oppressed” was an attempt to create Jewish “fifth columns” that even many Jews opposed. He said Israel had no right to “identify” all Jews, that they very often prefer to be known by their nationalities rather than by their religion, and that the Israeli attitude was not only dubious but dangerous to the international political structure. He spoke at the continuing UN Human Rights Commission hearings. Mr. Khallaf asserted that all United Arab Republic residents–whether Christian, Jewish, Moslem or atheist–were Egyptians, and that Jews in Egypt have equal religious rights and did not constitute a minority as defined by the Israeli delegate, Moshe Leshem. Mr. Leshem had said earlier that the right to emigrate was the “only hope” of escape from “continued violations of human rights inflicted upon Jewish communities” in Egypt, the Soviet Union, Syria and Iraq.

The Israeli delegate distinguished between “national” and “nationhood” and explained that Jews’ quest for survival extended beyond mere state boundaries. The Soviet delegate, Nikolai Tarassov, said appeals for Jewish emigration from Russia were aimed at “resurrecting from the dead” the specter of anti -Semitism. He described as slanderous charges that Soviet Jews were denied Jewish education and freedom of speech–they have not requested special education, he said, and there are more than 100 Yiddish writers being published. Mr. Tarassov also claimed that many Jews who had emigrated to Israel had found conditions there discriminatory and Intolerable.