PERSPECTIVE ON AID TO ISRAEL : Robbing Russia Isn’t an Option : The Jewish emigration crisis is over; U.S. interests lie in improving life in the Commonwealth, not Israeli settlements.

The impasse between the United States and Israel over settlements and loan guarantees may soon have an effect on President Bush’s request for additional humanitarian and technical assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States. There are reports that some of Israel’s congressional supporters, having lost the battle for loan guarantees, will respond by not allowing this further aid for Russia and the other former Soviet republics to be added to new foreign-aid legislation. This is particularly sad when U.S. aid to Israel, even without the loan guarantees, would still be double that of U.S. aid to all of the commonwealth republics together.

America’s national interests call upon us to help the commonwealth republics in their economic and political transformation and to help Israel and the Arabs reach peace. U.S. loan guarantees that would enable Israel to attract Jewish emigrants from the old Soviet Union and settle them in Israeli-occupied territories would not serve any of our national interests, whereas additional U.S. economic aid to the republics would.

Israel’s government exaggerates the humanitarian need for Jewish emigration in order to promote its ideological plan for territorial expansion. This expansion of Jewish communities in disputed territories makes peace agreements with Israel’s Arab neighbors virtually impossible and thus does not promote Israel’s future safety. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir himself revealed that his objective is ideological, not humanitarian, when he said in May, 1990, “If the Jews leaving the Soviet Union don’t come to Israel, there is no importance in their emigration.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III recently assessed the danger to Jews remaining in the Commonwealth as “minimal.” Rumors of growing anti-Semitism and possible pogroms contributed to the flood of Soviet Jewish emigration to Israel in 1989 and 1990. Lately, that emigration has declined dramatically, from the high point of 35,000 in December, 1990, to 6,000 in January, 1992.

Officials of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the quasi-governmental organization that assists immigration, report that 40,000 Jews in the commonwealth have visas for Israel but are declining to go. These officials also note that an additional 1.2 million who have “invitations,” the first step toward obtaining visas for Israel, are deeply ambivalent about going. These Jews say that they have not experienced and do not expect a wave of anti-Semitism, contrary to the warnings of Israeli and American Jews that they will be scapegoated for economic distress in the commonwealth. They express hope for future economic development and cultural freedom in the commonwealth. Also, friends and relatives already in Israel, where both unemployment and the cost of living are high, have let them know how bleak their situation would be there.

Under these circumstances, the real humanitarian interest of the United States is to provide the economic assistance that will help the commonwealth survive its economic and political challenges so that its people, Jews included, do not feel pressed to emigrate. But if that is their choice, Jews should continue to be free to move to Israel or the United States or elsewhere.

U.S. economic assistance should also enable Jewish professionals to stay and play a valuable role in the transformation of the republics. One reason Soviet authorities restricted Jewish emigration in the past was that they did not want to lose so many of their most highly educated professionals. Even after relaxing emigration policy, Mikhail Gorbachev appealed to Jews to stay and help.

There is certainly a greater immediate need for these Jewish professionals in the commonwealth than there is in Israel. Because Soviet Jewish emigration has doubled Israel’s supply of scientists, and because Israel’s university and research Establishment cannot absorb this flood, thousands of scientists, engineers, physicians and technicians have little prospect of practicing their professions in Israel.

Soviet Jewish emigres also have to face the acute housing shortage within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The government is concentrating new construction in the occupied territories, and is offering lucrative incentives to Israelis to move to these settlements, largely built on confiscated Palestinian Arab land. Placing the emigres in a cauldron of intercommunal conflict is not in anyone’s humanitarian interest, nor is displacing and repressing Palestinian Arabs to make way for the emigres.

Israel’s government sees the emigres as playing an essential role in altering the demographic character of the occupied territories, making impossible the territory-for-peace compromise that has been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, every U.S. President since 1967, and the Arab delegations now negotiating with Israel. Thus, once the United States had guaranteed $400 million in loans in 1990, Israel’s Likud government violated its pledge not to direct or settle Soviet Jews beyond the Green Line. Likud leaders have even led tours of emigres through West Bank settlements to persuade them to move in.

If Israel were to halt this settlement activity and instead develop houses, schools and jobs for its distressed emigres within its 1967 borders, then U.S. guarantees of some modest loan amount would be reasonable. But it is not reasonable for the United States to guarantee billions in loans when Israel plans to spend them in a way that needlessly drains the commonwealth of vital talent, exploits and endangers its emigres, dispossesses and violates the Palestinians and undermines our peacemaking. And it is not reasonable for some members of Congress to block additional aid to the commonwealth because President Bush will not guarantee loans that Israel will use in these ways. Instead, members of Congress should heed the bipartisan advice of Richard Nixon, Robert Strauss, Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar and so many others and provide additional foreign aid to the commonwealth republics now.