It is exactly five years since the first World Conference on Soviet Jewry was held in Brussels. The experience of that conference, and of the intervening five years, both point strongly to the need of another such conference, said Moshe Rivlin. Jewish Agency director-general, and a prime mover behind the second World Conference which opened today.
The second conference will be an occasion for stocktaking, and for planning new efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Rivlin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency before his departure for Brussels. It will also be a massive demonstration of Jewish and general solidarity with the cause of Soviet Jewry’s right to free aliya, he said.
The first conference, he recalled, was held under the shadow of the Leningrad trial. Some of the trial victims are still in prison; others have since been released and are in Israel. Aliya from the Soviet Union was still almost non-existent. But the conference organizers then were confident that they reflected a great, though as yet silent, welling up of Jewish nationalist feeling within the Soviet Union.
If added proof were needed, Rivlin said, it was supplied by the Soviet authorities themselves, who stepped up their persecution of Jewish activists and made strenuous propaganda efforts to disparage the 1971 conference and the motives of its organizers. In the live years since then, 115,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated, more than 100,000 of them to Israel. In the past year, however, there has been a steep fall-off in Soviet aliya, Rivlin noted, and at the same time increased harassment of would-be emigrants by the authorities.
TIME AGAIN TO AROUSE PUBLIC OPINION
“We are convinced,” he said, “that the time has come to arouse public opinion again….That is, after all, our only weapon.” Once again, the Soviets are proving to be sensitive to public opinion, Rivlin observed. He cited their current, almost frantic efforts to counter this week’s conference by a barrage of hostile propaganda aimed at the Western press in Moscow, and through them at the Western world as a whole.
“Some say,” Rivlin continued, “that the aliya of the 100,000-plus has in effect solved the problem of Soviet Jewry. We must show, dramatically through this conference, that that is not the case.” If the conference facilitates a new wave of aliya, as its organizers hope, then the drop-out rate (of emigrants who do not go on to Israel) will almost inevitably fall, Rivlin predicted. The wave will of itself sweep the emigrants towards Israel, he said.
He added, with regard to the embarrassing problem of drop-outs: “I am concerned with those who do want to come to Israel. There is no reason to punish them because of those who don’t want to come. I am not the judge of anyone who doesn’t want to come.” But, Rivlin added, “Our task is to make every effort to facilitate the free exit of anyone who does want to live in Israel.”
Some drop-outs, he believes, are created by the Soviets themselves who deliberately allow non-Zionists to leave some too, is caused by discouraging letters from Israel. The discouraging letters, of course, are often the results of absorption difficulties of Soviet olim who pour out their heavy hearts to friends and relatives back home. But over the past five years, Rivlin said, there has been a tremendous increase in understanding on both sides. Israelis and Israeli officialdom have learned a lot and so. too, have the Soviet immigrants.
Rivlin cited the business-like atmosphere at the recent national convention of Soviet immigrants, different from the previous convention in Beersheba in 1973 which broke up in pandemonium as a result of the bitter dissatisfaction which many of the delegates voiced, with the government and with their own leaders.
MUST AVOID ANTI-SOVIETISM TAINT
The Israeli delegation to Brussels this time is made up half of Soviet immigrants and half of veteran Israelis. The Soviets, said Rivlin, represent a wide cross-section of views and groups among the newcomers. They represent, too, in effect, Soviet Jewry itself, which cannot send its own delegates.
Above all, Rivlin said, the conference must avoid any taint of “anti-Sovietism per se,” the charge which the Soviet propagandists are levelling against it. As far as he is aware, he said, there are no forces from within the 1000-odd delegates pulling in that direction.
The conference will put emphasis on those parts of the Helsinki East-West agreement (which ended the European Security Conference last year) that called for the free movement of people. “The Russians signed the agreement and the conference will demand that they honor their signature,” Rivlin said.
On a practical level, the conference will consider proposals for new forms of public action designed to stir the Soviets into letting Jews leave. The Kremlin’s relations with the West are constantly changing, constantly developing. Rivlin noted. The conference will try to focus on new countries, new organizations, now political groupings in the West which could perhaps be brought to exert their influence upon the Kremlin on behalf of Soviet Jewry, he said.
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.
