Affording the best is not the
question...finding the best is.
Jackson-Vanik:
Work Yet To Do
me,
rr f s
'
A first...
Apartment living in a
Skilled Nursing facility
For the discriminating person
requiring an elegant environment
Bortz Health Care
on Green Lake
Family owned and operated for over 33 years
Medicare approved.
Overlooking two beautiful lakes
CALL
363-4121
For our limousine to pick you up for a personal tour of our facility.
6470 Alden Drive, Orchard Lake
DONALD E. GALE, D.D.S.
353-'2200
DENTURE
CENTER
HARVARD ROW MALL
21774 WEST 11 MILE RD.
SOUTHFIELD, MI 48076
78
EXTRACTIONS
DENTURES & PARTIALS
RELINES & REPAIRS
QUALITY DENTURES AT AFFORDABLE PRICES
30 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Don't let the
winter get you
down ...
Get into shape
with a
Personal
Trainer.
CALL FOR A FREE CONSULTATION
,
Certified Personal Trainer
Women's Fitness Spedallst
(810) 855-9559
•t#
Touch A Life.
The United Way.
.
Jerusalem (JTA) — Activists
marking the anniversary of U.S.
legislation that helped open the
emigration gates for Soviet Jew-
ry say there is still much work to
be done for those in the former
Soviet republics, as well as for
those who left.
Some 500 former refuseniks,
Prisoners of Zion and Western ac-
tivists were gathered in
Jerusalem to mark 20 years since
the Jackson-Vanik Amendment
was signed into law on Jan. 10,
1975 as part of the Trade Reform
Act.
Sponsored in the Senate by
Henry Jackson, D-Wash., and in
the House by Charles Vanik, D-
Ohio, the amendment made the
granting of most-favored-nation
trade status conditional on poli-
cies of free emigration.
Participants at the three-day
conference agreed that the
amendment, which was mostly
the work of Jackson, was an im-
portant landmark, if not the turn-
ing point, in the struggle for
Soviet Jewry.
It came as the Nixon and then
Ford administrations were seek-
ing detente with the Soviet
Union. And it put the muscle
of American law behind the
efforts of a number of grass
roots organizations seeking to
keep the issue of free emigration
alive.
Activists say it was Jackson-
Vanik which made the Soviets
backtrack on crippling taxes de-
signed to keep Jews from leaving.
Natan Sharansky, perhaps the
most famous Prisoner of Zion and
chairman of the conference, was
jailed in the 1970s after being
convicted of high treason and
anti-Soviet activities.
At the conference, Mr. Sha-
ransky said the charge of high
treason was for helping fellow dis-
sidents communicate with Mr.
Jackson.
"One of my interrogators
claimed that the Jackson-Vanik
Amendment had cost the Soviet
Union $20 billion, and rhetori-
cally asked me, Do you think you
can pass this amendment and not
suffer?' "
Organizers say the gathering
was not only an opportunity to
commemorate the efforts of a
friend of Israel and the Jewish
people, but also to discuss the
lessons learned from Jackson-
Vanik and whether they can be
applied to present and future is-
sues.
Glenn Richter, head of the Stu-
dent Struggle for Soviet Jewry,
said Jackson-Vanik taught young
activists how to lobby Congress,
and alluded to one area in which
this knowledge could be put to
further use.
`There are presently 56 in-
stances in the [former Soviet
Union] where Soviet Jewish cit-
izens are being denied the right
to emigrate because they had ac-
cess to state secrets," Mr. Richter
said. "We learned from Israel that
you don't abandon your soldiers
on the battlefield."
Susan Green, of the New York
Coalition for Soviet Jewry, said
a by-product of the collapse of the
Soviet Union is anarchy in some
of the republics.
She warned that some people
in those republics believe that the
only way to restore order is to go
back to old repressive ways, and
that the ones who suffered from
repression most were the Jews.
"We must hope for the best, but
be prepared for the worst," Mr.
Green said. It is estimated that
some 2 million Jews remain in
the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Sharansky
criticized Prime
Minister Yitzhak
Rabin.
Elena Bonner, widow of dissi-
dent physicist Andre Sakharov,
used the plenum to call for
world condemnation of Russian
attacks in Chechnya, the break-
away republic currently em-
broiled in an armed rebellion
against Moscow.
Other participants talked of
the approximately 800,000 Sovi-
et Jews who have emigrated to
Israel. More than a half-million
have arrived in the past five
years, and their absorption has
been problematic.
"Our real challenge now is to
absorb the Soviet Jews here," said
Amos Eran, who as a diplomat at
Israel's Embassy in Washington
20 years ago, became a close
friend of Jackson.
While former refusenik Yuli
Edelstein believes most of the re-
cent arrivals have put their lo-
gistical problems behind them,
he doubts they have become an
integral part of Israeli society.
"This is true not only for the
most recent arrivals," Mr. Edel-
stein said, "but also for some of
those who came in the 1970s."
Mr. Sharansky criticized
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for
failing, in his address to the con-
ference, to acknowledge the dif-
ficulties faced by Soviet
immigrants.