ISRAEL KEEP THE DOOR OPEN : Refugees Are the Lifeblood of a Nation Born as Refuge : Arab attempts to stop the immigration of Soviet Jews is a new twist in a long campaign to eliminate the Jewish state.

A domestic political crisis has erupted in Israel, the only state in which the rise and fall of governments is determined not by social, economic or environmental issues, but by the agonizing dilemma of how to expedite the pursuit of peace.

As Israel grapples with this crisis, the course of Jewish history is being affected by watershed developments in the Soviet Union. The mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel marks the successful culmination of a long and strenuous international effort. This momentous development is of particular importance today, as the darker side of democratization generates a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

At the same time, an ugly campaign is being waged by Arab states with the aim of halting immigration of Jews to Israel altogether. Threats of terrorism and coercive diplomacy are being employed on a grand scale.

After thousands of years of repression and persecution culminating in the slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, the state of Israel was reborn. There, the Jews of the world were finally guaranteed a permanent safe haven to which they could immigrate. Never again would they remain helpless in the face of mortal danger as gates of freedom were shut to them. The gates of Israel will forever be open. This is the very essence, the raison d’etre, of Israel. Indeed, Israel has absorbed wave after wave of destitute refugees, including the survivors of the concentration and death camps in Europe and 800,000 refugees from Arab countries.

The concerted Arab effort to stop Jewish immigration dates back to the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is part of a systematic campaign against the essence of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, against the right of Jews to a state of their own, and against peace and accommodation with reality.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, Jewish refugees fled anti-Semitic persecution in Europe for British-governed Palestine, only to be met by belligerent Arab opposition. Acquiescing to unceasing pressure by the Arab leadership, Britain responded with the notorious “White Paper” of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration even as the danger facing the Jews of Europe was urgently apparent. The moral implications were disregarded then as they are disregarded today.

Absolutist hostility to Jewish presence led Arab states to oppose the emergence of a Jewish state in their midst, an attitude that remains paramount today. Moammar Kadafi calls for all-out war on Israel with bloodcurdling imagery: “Palestine is another oven, a collective oven for all the Jews. I advise the Jews to leave the oven before it gets hot for them.” Yasser Arafat concurs: “The Jews in occupied Palestine should return to their countries of origin.” Hafez Assad calls for eternal Jihad, a holy war against Israel, “until the end of time.” Assad, Arafat and Kadafi declare that Jews have no right to a sovereign state--and that, in any case, they are not even Jews but descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe converted to Judaism in the 8th Century. Kadafi calls, therefore, for the deportation of Israel’s population to Estonia and Lithuania (where the Khazars migrated) as the way to achieve “just peace.”

As verbal incitement often leads to bloodshed, such statements cannot be ignored. Two months ago, nine Israeli tourists were killed when their sightseeing bus was attacked in Egypt. The motive, according to the Islamic Jihad: to remind Soviet Jews that Israel is not the land of milk and honey, but the land of death.

Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization have now conjured up a major diplomatic storm in a worldwide effort to block the flow of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. Pretexts aside, it is the potential strengthening of Israel by immigration that arouses their vehement opposition. As the Saudi newspaper Al-Riad puts it: “Unless Palestine is turned into an inferno through escalation of the military struggle . . . the Jews in Palestine will number over 8 million by the beginning of the 21st Century.”

This is the true nature of the “problem”: Israel is committing a colossal crime by refusing to simply wither away.

An acceptable smoke screen had to be found. Hence, the trumped-up and preposterous charge that Israel intends to displace the Palestinians by settling Jewish immigrants in their place. There are no grounds for this allegation.

Far from displacing Palestinians, Israel is the only party engaged in their rehabilitation. Since 1971, Israel has rehabilitated 150,000 Palestinians who left the refugee camps of their own volition and reside today in permanent housing in Gaza. Israel has also facilitated the return of 70,000 Palestinians from Arab countries.

Those who refuse to accept the reality of the Jewish state, and who persist in pursuing the dream of overrunning it, continue to oppose Jewish immigration to Israel. Yet the mass return of Jews to their homeland confirms that the anachronistic dream of doing away with Israel is becoming increasingly unpalatable and self-defeating.