Soviet Jewish Emigration: Second Thoughts in Moscow?

By John Asfour

Soviet coup survivor Mikhail Gorbachev made plain in his poignant message to survivors of the infamous Babi Yar massacre in the Ukraine that he hoped anti-Semitism was dead enough in the Soviet sovereign states and republics that Jews would not feel compelled to emigrate. President Gorbachev made plain that the new Soviet sovereign republics would not tolerate anti-Semitism, that he personally wanted Jews and other minorities to stay and build a new society, and that he would actively work to persuade them to remain.

Meanwhile, President Bush announced that 11,000 refugee visas allotted and never used in 1991 would be rolled over into 1992, permitting up to 61,000 Soviet refugees to come here. During the past year, the number registered at the US Embassy in Moscow for refugee status has grown at 10,000 a month and now stands at 360,000. Eighty percent of Soviet refugees approved to enter identify themselves as Jews. Some 39,000 Soviet refugees came to America in the fiscal year ending Oct. 1, andmore than 30,000 of them were Jewish.

The 1.7 million officially registered Jews of the old Soviet Union have been reduced by close to 500,000 in the past 30 months ... 300,000 to Israel, 80,000 to the United States, and the remainder spread among Australia, Canada and various European countries. In fact, it is estimated that at least another million Jews ducked registration as members of a Semitic minority and that there still may be more than 2.5 million who could conceivably claim citizenship in Israel, one way or another.

The Think Tank Needs Them

One of Gorbachev's chief planners in the abortive 500-day plan to privatize the economy, Leonid Grigoriev, was in Washington in October with the conservative Heritage Foundation. His task upon returning is to form a Western-style think tank, and he admitted one of his main problems was the fact that so many private sector-oriented economists are leaving the country, including Jews, Armenians and other minorities.

"We used to have all of them meeting together on this subject or that. Now it is difficult to get anyone but Russian economists and planners to meet together and work on the huge problems of privatizing the economy," he said, citing this as a significant factor in dealing with problems facing the 12 republics.

Everyone admits that most emigrants are leaving to escape chaos and seek better economic opportunities, not because of a real threat to their existence individually or as a people. In fact, some Jews have lately been quoted in The New York Times as wanting to remain and rebuild their native land, difficult as it may be. A new Jewish cultural freedom in the Soviet republics has been remarked on by Israeli newspapers, though for Israelis, heavy Soviet immigration into Israel is a necessity.

Some American Jews Oppose Their Coming

At the same time, some American Jews have deplored the policies of national Jewish organizations discouraging Russian Jews from coming to the United States. Jerome Segal of the Jewish Peace Lobby wrote in The Washington Post that options for Jews of the Soviet Union would be far clearer if American quotas for Soviet emigrants were raised from 50,000 per year. He suggests that as many as 500,000 Soviet Jews would choose to wait and come to the US on an expedited basis over the next few years.

"Battering Ram" for Greater Israel

Instead, he notes, "the Soviet Jews are being used as a demographic battering ram for the Likud pursuit of a "Greater Israel. He might have added that by limiting the choices to remaining in the Soviet Union or emigrating to Israel, Israel's Likud government and the US government have violated every principle of American immigration law. "Let my people go ... but only to Israel" has replaced traditional US support for open borders and open choice.

American Interest Clear: Adopt All Three Choices

Grigoriev believes in encouraging the maximum number to remain and build new democratic societies on the ruins of the Soviet empire. This would be far less expensive to US taxpayers than recruiting them to emigrate to Israel. So would their emigration to North America, Europe and Australia, where appropriate jobs await them, if they so desire. Give them choice.

The most expensive additional option, costing tens of billions of US tax dollars, would be to let the present no-choice policy proceed by default, resettling 90 percent of them in Israel, many on lands illegally seized from their Palestinian owners. Will US politicians perceive this, regardless of party? There are some signs that the public debate will not end after 120 days. Which is, perhaps, exactly what President George Bush and his allies in Congress are hoping.

John Asfour is a specialist in the political economies of Palestine and Israel.

SIDEBAR

MEI Participants Learn More About Media than Media Learns About Mideast

At the annual meeting of the Middle East Institute, in Washington, DC, speaker after speaker, including a Likud member of the Jerusalem City Council, expressed optimism that Arabs and Jews would sit down shortly at the same table. Most speakers agreed, however, that peace still is far off and the issues absolutely unresolved.

Keynote speaker George McGovern joked at the Oct. 4 MEI banquet that if President Bush stuck with his present Middle East policy, McGovern, a former Democratic presidential candidate, might have to vote for a Republican for the first time. Both the president and Secretary of State James Baker received high marks from McGovern and other speakers for their efforts to stop Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Although former Senator McGovern's speech was newsworthy as well as witty, no Washington newspaper covered it, or any other part of the conference, attended by 400 people, including many distinguished foreign affairs experts. Of the networks, only CNN covered any part of the conference, and then only during the first day, when the Likud member was present. The conference demonstrated the Bush-Baker effort to freeze settlements in the occupied territories, and force protagonists in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to talk land for peace, has attracted bi-partisan support. Unfortunately, however, the conference also demonstrated that the US media wall of silence when it comes to serious discussion of Middle East issues hasn't yet been breached.

—JA