Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday January 29, 1999

Russian radio callers say they want Jews to leave

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Many Russians believe life here would be better if it were not for the Jews.
Some 36 percent of recent callers to a Moscow radio station said Russia would benefit if all Jews left for Israel.

The station posed the question about Jewish emigration after Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, who visited Russia last week, urged Jews from Russia and other former Soviet states to immigrate to Israel.

Concern about Russian attitudes toward Jews has prompted American Jewish activists to bring the issue to top U.S. officials.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told American Jewish officials last week that she would discuss the recent rise in Russian anti-Semitism during a visit to Moscow this week.

In addition to raising the issue with Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, she said she would appeal directly to the Russian people to exercise greater tolerance and oppose anti-Semitism.

Albright also told the group that while she was planning discussions with opposition lawmakers, she would not meet with Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov because of his recent anti-Semitic remarks.

Last fall, two other Russian legislators from the Communist Party made a series of anti-Semitic comments. Drawing international condemnation as well as criticism from President Boris Yeltsin's government, the Russian Parliament failed to condemn those remarks.

At a meeting in Washington last week, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Anti-Defamation League presented Albright with a paper on anti-Semitism detailing specific steps Russian leaders should take to combat the phenomenon. The ADL plans to conduct a poll on anti-Semitic attitudes among Russians in the coming weeks.

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.