My Letter on the Soviet Jewry Struggle

Regarding "Heroes and hitchhikers," Haaretz Magazine, November 9

I was happy that Tom Segev noted, in his column about the exhibition devoted to the struggle for the release of the Jews of the Soviet Union, that in effect the major debate between activism and diplomacy, which accompanied that struggle for years, has been downplayed.

As someone who participated in the first mass demonstration in New York, on May 1, 1964, and until my aliyah to Israel in 1970, and even afterward when I traveled from London, where I was an emissary, to a consultation with Ida Nudel (who is missing from the exhibition), Alexander Lerner, Natan Sharansky and the Slepaks, in Moscow in November, 1976 - I was witness to repeated attempts by the leaders of the Israeli establishment and their supporters among most of the Jewish leadership in the United States and Great Britain, to repress the phenomenon of independent activity.

From holding conversations aimed at intervention, such as those conducted by Yoram Dinstein in the offices of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in New York and Nehemia Levanon in London, to preventing Yasha Kazakov (Yaakov Kedmi) and Dov Sperling from entering a meeting of activists in Manhattan, the Jewish and Israeli establishment revealed extraordinary initiative and creativity.

It's only a shame that those same modes of thinking and planning were not applied vis-a-vis Soviet Russia. Maybe many Jews succeeded in leaving Soviet Russia, but apparently it is difficult to remove from them the Soviet methods of operation that they probably learned there.

Yisrael Medad
Shiloh