The House Subcommittee on State Department Organization and Foreign Operations will recommend to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it approve the appropriation of $85 million to provide financial help to Israel for the support of Soviet Jewish immigrants. The subcommittee’s approval was voiced by chairman Wayne L, Hayes (D.,Ohio) after a one day hearing on a bill introduced in the House by Rep, Jonathan B. Bingham (D.,N.Y.) with 62 co-sponsors, A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate by Edmund S, Muskie (D.,Me.). That bill has 40 sponsors.
At the one-day hearing last week on his bill, Bingham pointed out that his proposal for financial help to Israel for the emigres should not be confused with the supporting assistance to Israel under the Foreign Assistance Bill in which Israel is to receive up to $300 million in military credits and a grant of $50 million in economic support.
Frank L. Kellogg, special assistant to the Secretary of State for Refugees and Migration Affairs, told the committee that “my office and the administration are very sympathetic to the plight of Soviet Jews” adding that “we recognize the problem they are having in living behind the Iron Curtain and the difficulty they have in getting out.”
Kellogg said the Department was at present providing support for Soviet Jews in transit mostly in Vienna and to “a small number in Rome.” He also said it was contributing to the International Committee for European Migrants (ICEM) which is helping provide the emigres with transportation. In 1971, he added, the State Department aided 8,392 individual Soviet Jews who went to Israel and “a smaller number” who came to the US.
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.
