NEWS STORY: Fears mount that Moscow is halting Jewish emigration

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-The head of Israel’s Jewish Agency conferred with American Jewish officials Thursday (May 2) about the possibility of rallying diplomatic pressure against Russia following mounting concerns that Moscow may be about to limit the emigration of Russian Jews to Israel. The concerns were prompted by the unexpected cancellation last month […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-The head of Israel’s Jewish Agency conferred with American Jewish officials Thursday (May 2) about the possibility of rallying diplomatic pressure against Russia following mounting concerns that Moscow may be about to limit the emigration of Russian Jews to Israel.

The concerns were prompted by the unexpected cancellation last month of the Jewish Agency’s permit to operate in Russia. Since 1989, the agency-a quasi-official arm of the Israeli government-has helped more than 630,000 Jews leave Russia and other former Soviet republics and resettle in Israel.


Avraham Burg, the Jewish Agency’s chairman, flew to New York from Israel on Wednesday (May 1) and spent part of Thursday in conference calls with American Jewish leaders.”We’re not asking for any specific action at this point,”said Gad Ben-Ari, the head of the Jewish Agency’s North American section, headquartered in New York.”Basically, Avraham just wants everyone to begin to prepare for the worst eventuality … the shutting down of the Jewish Agency in Russia and the curbing of Jewish emigration.” Ben-Ari noted that so far there has been no known attempt to prevent Jews from leaving Russia.”So far, the only action taken has been against the Jewish Agency,”he said.

The Jewish Agency derives most of its funding from the United Jewish Appeal fund-raising effort in the United States, which sends about $200 million annually to the agency. Jewish communities in other western nations are also contributors.

An estimated 1.4 million Jews remain in the former Soviet republics, about 600,000 of them in Russia. Israeli officials have predicted that about 65,000 Jews would continue to leave Russia annually for Israel in the forseeable future.

The concern now is that Russian policy toward Jewish emigration may revert to what it was before 1989, when Soviet authorities made it very difficult for Jews to leave.

Harsh Soviet treatment of”refuseniks,”as Jews who were refused the right to emigrate were called, was a major irritant between the Soviet Union and the United States. Pressure put on Moscow by the American government-much of it at the instigation of the Jewish community-is viewed as a prime reason for the Kremlin’s decision to allow massive Jewish emigration to begin during the Soviet Union’s final years.

State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said Wednesday that Clinton administration officials are”very concerned”by the latest twist in Russia’s relationship to the Jewish Agency.

Davies told reporters that the matter has been raised at”very senior levels in the Russian government”and that the State Department was waiting for a response.


Burg’s visit to New York followed the recent closure by Russian police of a Jewish Agency office in one provincial Russian town and the abrupt cancellation of a seminar for potential immigrants in Piatigorsk, a gathering point for Jewish refugees from Chechnya and elsewhere in the strife-torn Caucusus region.

The police actions followed an unexpected Russian government notice in early April that the Jewish Agency’s license to operate in the country had been cancelled-and that the agency would have to seek new accreditation to operate.

Although Russian representatives in Israel have described the need for new accreditation as purely bureaucratic, some Israeli and Jewish Agency officials have hinted at political motives behind the clampdown.

According to one theory, Russia is unhappy with the agency’s aggressive tactics in recruiting Jewish immigrants to Israel-a campaign that has seen a large percentage of Russia’s professional elite leave the country.

Other observers believe that Russia’s new foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, is displeased with Russia’s diminished role in the Middle East peace process and wants to exert pressure on Israel.

Israeli Foreign Ministry and Jewish Agency sources, however, have rejected any attempt to link agency activities in Russia with Israeli-Russian political relations.


Burg’s trip to New York was intended to underline that point by raising the issue in the Jewish diaspora.

Eldad Adar, a Jewish Agency spokesman in Israel, said”the Jewish organizations in the United States and in Europe are our partners and it is with them that we will formulate a response.” Based in Jerusalem, the Jewish Agency was created in 1929 as a worldwide organization designed to promote Jewish culture and communal life and to encourage settlement in the Jewish homeland then known as Palestine. Today, the agency maintains branches in dozens of countries and has more than 100 offices in the republics of the former Soviet Union alone.

MJP END RNS

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