Very interesting article on how Israel forced Jewish emigrants from the former Soviet Union to go to Israel and not to the United States where many wanted to go. Published in Israel's largest circulation newspaper.
Other authors including Alfred Lilienthal have previously written about this forced diversion.
Ed Corrigan
"This is How We Cheated the Immigrants," by Ronen Bergman, Yedioth Ahronoth,
-- They were determined to bring as many Jews to Israel as they could.
The truth got left behind.
This complex tale of fraud, reported here for the first time, is without question one of the most incredible ever to occur in the history of the State of Israel. The essence of the story is a secret mission by the Netiv organization, which was responsible for bringing Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel.
The goal of the mission was to prevent Jews who were leaving the disintegrating superpower from immigrating to the United States. The man behind the program was Yaakov Kedmi, who served for many years as the head of Netiv.
More than 20 years after the incident, Kedmi told Yedioth Ahronoth’s Seven Days magazine about the lies that stood behind the huge program to bring Soviet Jews to Israel. […] The roots of the “Netiv deception” lie in the immigration wave that started in the early 1970s. Many Jews left the Soviet Union at that time, ostensibly for Israel, but went to the United States—mainly via Vienna—instead of continuing on to Israel, with
the help of Jewish organizations such as the Joint Distribution
Committee. At that time, Israel tried to deal with the phenomenon by dispatching a Jewish Agency representative, but to no avail.
In September 1989, as the USSR was collapsing, many Jews began to look for new homes. In Israel fears that a growing number of Jews would “drop out” [and go to the United States] and officials decided to take action. “It was the right time to take these people and to point them in the right direction for us,” says Kedmi. “If we had missed this opportunity,
only a few would have come to Israel.”
To bring them to Israel, Kedmi devised a sneaky plan to give immigrants the notion that their only option was to come to Israel. “The principle was that anyone who received an exit visa from Moscow to Israel would also receive an immigrant’s visa to Israel. Without it [we told them]
they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the Soviet Union or to enter any other country unless they presented a plane ticket for Hungary or Romania. We took care that once they arrived in Bucharest or in Budapest, the only option they would have would be to come to Israel,” said Kedmi.
The choice of Hungary and Romania was not coincidental. “We arranged with dear Ceausescu, of blessed memory, that Jews who got to Romania would only be allowed to come to Israel. In most instances they were not even allowed to leave the airport. In Hungary, too, we had similar arrangements. The herd-like mentality, the psychological pressure and the Soviet education all worked in our favor.
Kedmi says he obtained the Romanian assistance for the plan by
means of cash. “Shaike Dan (a founder of Nativ and a senior Israeli intelligence official) made a deal with the Romanian intelligence community that called for Romania to get a USD 100 million loan from the United States in exchange for a guarantee that Soviet Jews would only leave Bucharest in one direction—Ben-Gurion Airport.”
Kedmi said the program was approved by then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. Some members of the Foreign Ministry expressed reservations about the plan, but Kedmi told them in no uncertain terms “ you do your jobs and don’t get in my way.”
Today, Kedmi has no regrets. “I was comfortable [with the program] then and I am comfortable now with what I did for this country,” he said.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment