News Brief

Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, presented a letter today to Secretary General U Thant in which he described the High Holy Days as a “time of compassion, understanding and forgiveness.” In that spirit, he appealed to Thant “and through you” to Soviet authorities to “deal understandingly and compassionately” with Russian Jewish prisoners and with “the multitudes” of Russian Jews who want to emigrate.

The envoy declared in his letter that “at no time of the year is the longing, the prayer, the hope to be at home, with one’s own family and one’s people stronger than at this period of Rosh Hashana, the Ten Days of Penitence which follow it, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which culminates it.” Tekoah said that it was in that spirit, that he was again calling the Secretary General’s attention “to those of our brethren, especially in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and in certain Arab states who are still separated, against their wishes, from their families and their people.”

FREE ALL JEWISH POLITICAL PRISONERS

In the letter, Tekoah emphasized that “the scores of thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union, who have applied for permits to join their kin and kith in Israel, have made it clear in their appeals to you and to the Soviet authorities that they bear no ill will toward the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics but cannot live away from their families and their people in Israel.” He gave as 41 the number of “Jewish political prisoners” jailed during the past year in various Soviet cities who “find themselves at this High Holy Day season away from their home only because of their faith in and attachment to their Jewish home, the Jewish family, their Jewish people.”

Tekoah said it was “gratifying that during the past year “a small number of Soviet Jews have been permitted to depart for Israel” and he added “it would be an act of highest justice and compassion if the Soviet authorities were to pursue this course by freeing the prisoners and allowing all Jews who desire to join their families and their people in Israel to do so.” The ambassador transmitted to Thant additional letters from Soviet Jews asking for help in their efforts to obtain permission to leave for Israel.

During their meeting. Thant told Tekoah that neither he nor Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring, the special UN Mideast envoy, felt there was any basis at the present time for resuming Dr. Jarring’s peace mission. Tekoah responded by observing that the efforts on the interim agreement should be continued. (See story Page 1.)