THE SOVIET JEWRY DEAL
tremely angry at finding themselves
unable to "drop out" and head for the
United States rather than Israel.
There is widespread public skepticism
that even now the Israeli authorities —
particularly the Jewish Agency and the
Ministry of Immigration and Absorption —
will be able to provide the new arrivals with
a smoother, less traumatic entry into
Israeli society than was available to earlier
generations of Soviet immigrants.
The bureaucratic and personal enmities
between the two authorities simply appear
too profound and too deeply embedded to
allow the officials to put aside their petty
squabbling and rise to the occasion.
Absorption Minister Ya'acov Tsur has
reacted defensively to his critics, pointing
out that 94 percent of the Soviet Jews who
arrived in Israel in recent years have re-
mained in the country.
Jews from the Soviet region of
Georgia live in this housing
development near Ramot.
Absorption is one of
the problems that
Israel would face if
the USSR suddenly
opened the gates to
its Jewish population.
Here, the "Tzadik of
Leningrad," Yitzhak
Kogan, a refusenik
for 14 years, begins
the process by
signing his aliya
certificate.
48
He also made the point that these Soviet
Jews have tended to achieve a higher-than-
average socio-economic status.
Conspicuously absent from his upbeat
appraisal, however, was the fact that in
those same recent years, some 80 percent
of Soviet emigrants chose not to come to
Israel at all.
One of the major reasons for this is the
appalling reputation that Israel's
bureaucracy has acquired among Jews in
the Soviet Union; a reputation fueled by
an estimated one million letters that Soviet
immigrants in Israel have sent to their
relatives and friends back home.
In an effort to overcome these problems,
the Absorption Ministry and the Jewish
Agency last week judiciously leaked the
news that a "radical new absorption
policy" had been adopted that was
specifically tailored to meet the needs of
the new and unexpected influx.
The $250 million plan, which will be
Friday, May 8, 1987
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
financed jointly by the government and
the Jewish Agency, will involve providing
subsidized rental accommodation for at
least one year in apartments that the im-
migrants themselves will be able to choose.
The plan also provides for pensions for
the elderly and intensive job re-training
and work placement programs.
Almost immediately, however, the "rad-
ical new absorption policy" ran into the
kind of political back-biting that has for
years characterized the absorption process.
Jewish Agency Immigration and Ab-
sorption head Haim Aharon complained
bitterly that the agreement between
Minister Tsur and Jewish Agency
Treasurer Akiva Lewinsky — both Labor
Party appointees — was made without
consulting him or the Jewish Agency's
Board of Governors.
A few weeks ago, such a spat would have
been regarded as just another sordid round
in the ongoing personal and political con-
flict that forms the basis of the relation-
ship between the two absorption supremos.
But now, with a full-blooded row in the
air even before the immigrants have ar-
rived, there is widespread public dismay.
Expressing its disgust at the uncontrol-
lable displays of high-level pique, the
Hebrew-language daily Hatzofeh appealed
to the absorption authorities to make "a
supreme effort so that both the reception
and absorption [of the Soviet Jews] will not
cause them disappointment."
"There must be an end," noted another
columnist, "to the petty, selfish rivalry
that turns immigration and absorption in-
to a political football."
Yuri Stern, the highly articulate former
Muscovite who is now spokesman for the
Jerusalem-based Soviet Jewry Education
and Information Centre, reserved a special
note of contempt for the "paternalistic,
centralist, Bolshevik planning and decis-
ion-making that is still with us.
"This does not affect only Soviet Jews,"
he says, "but also immigrants from other
countries. However, those who come from
such places as the United States, Britain
and South America are not so dependent.
They have money and powerful Diaspora
organizations behind them.
"We are very much afraid that the same
mistakes are going to be repeated all over
again. We only hope that those who come —
with years of struggle behind them and
maybe a lot of anger, too — will produce
a change in the system through their
resistance and protests.
"But the anger and the protests are cer-
tainly not something we dream about
because in so doing the new arrivals might
create great resentment among the general
public, which hears only about the '$250
Shamir is playing a
cautious wait-and-see
game. He does not
want to bring the
Soviets into the peace
process but he can
hardly say no to the
release of 12,000
Soviet Jews.
million plan' and does not understand that
the anger and the protests are justified and
that changes are necessary."
Jewish Agency Director-General Howard
Weisband also recognizes the need for fun-
damental changes within and between the
bodies that coordinate the absorption
process.
"When Soviet immigration was high in
the Seventies and early Eighties, there was