JERUSALEM (Sep. 1)
Another anti-Israel article, written by one of the members of the first Soviet all-Jewish tourist group permitted to visit Israel, appears in a Moscow paper received here today. The first, by Gricori Plotkin, published in a Moscow evening paper, was a collection of crude anti-Israel calumnies. The second article by the same “tourist,” published in “Literaturnaya Gazeta,” is considered here a more sophisticated distortion.
Experts here agreed that both articles were patently aimed at diminishing the unabated desire of Russia’s Jews to emigrate to Israel. A typical statement in the second article was that “it would be incorrect to deny the expansion of Israel’s economy during the past ten years. In that short time large numbers of apartments and public buildings have been constructed and the number of industries and educational institutions has been increased.”
However, Plotkin asserted, “all this has been done with contributions and loans from abroad. He “described” how each development expenditure required American approval and asserted that “all checks signed by the Minister of Finance also bear the counter-signature of the head of the American aid mission.”
The “tourist” also wrote that Americans were giving money for schools but that they “dictated” what should be taught, Americans permitted Israel to establish assembly industries, thus “forcing” Israel to buy parts in the United States, he asserted. He also “revealed” that only poor wage earners paid taxes in Israel while capitalists “from abroad” were exempt from taxation. He repeated in his second article that “large scale unemployment” existed in Israel.