Tekoah Urges UN Action on Trial, Plight of Soviet Jews

Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, met yesterday with Secretary General U Thant to discuss with him the trial of the nine Soviet Jews in Leningrad. Tekoah emphasized the need for UN action on this matter and also informed Thant that Israel will raise the question of the trial and the situation of the Jews in the USSR in the current session of the Economic and Social Council. Earlier in the day, a spokesman for Thant said the Secretary General would not issue a public statement on the trial and declined to say if Thant would contact the Soviet authorities on the matter. After his meeting with Thant, Tekoah said that the show trial of the Soviet Jews is a “grave assault on the fundamental human rights of the Jewish community in the USSR.” The Israeli ambassador said that right is guaranteed to the Soviet Jews by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the Soviet Union is a signatory, and by Soviet law. The present trial and the imminent trials in Riga and Kishinev, demonstrate the tragic plight of the Soviet Jews and the utter disregard by the Soviet Union of its international obligations, Tekoah declared. He added: “We know that these show trials will not break the spirit of Soviet Jews just as the spirit of their fathers was not broken by Czarist pogroms.” Tekoah asserted that Israel will not rest until the rights of the Jews in the Soviet Union and in the Arab lands are secure.