Shimon Peres, Minister of Transportation and Communications, has accused the Soviet authorities of breaking international postal law by deliberately refusing to deliver letters from Israelis to relatives in the Soviet Union, including invitations to join them in Israel. Soviet law requires Soviet citizens who wish to migrate to Israel to submit such invitations; without them they may not even initiate the process of securing an exit visa. Peres told a meeting of his Ministry staff that complaints have been reaching the Post Office from Israelis who have sent invitations to Soviet relatives, claiming they were not delivered. An investigation, Peres said, revealed that the Soviet authorities were confiscating the invitations on a large scale and as a matter of deliberate policy. Even invitations sent by registered mail were not always delivered. Peres reported, and in some cases none of several invitations to the same address was delivered. This, Peres charged, constitutes a breach of international postal law. (A similar charge was made in recent days by Rep. Edward I. Koch, Democrat of New York, in a letter to Postmaster General Winton M. Blount, who said he would study the matter.)
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.
