(newspaper unidentified) · 1 January 1990

CP-1990-001

Israel censoring news of Soviet immigrants

Allyn Fisher, Associated Press, Jerusalem

Scan 1060 × 992 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

“Israeli leaders fail to agree on U.S. plan. JERUSALEM — Israel’s four top leaders yesterday debated U.S. proposals for opening Middle East peace talks, but they failed to bridge differences blocking a response to the plan… Shamir rejected domestic and international pressure for a quick decision… In remarks bound to further strain relations with the United States, Shamir also said the government would direct Soviet Jewish immigrants to Jerusalem, including Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

The United States opposes such a policy. Without mentioning his name, Shamir criticized President Bush for saying there should be no new settlements in East Jerusalem, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

‘There are no settlements in Jerusalem,’ Shamir told foreign Jewish fund-raisers in a statement that an aide said was pointedly added to a prepared speech to counter Bush’s comment.

He reiterated his opposition to any proposal that deviated from Israel’s elections plan and rejected any role in peace talks for the Palestine Liberation Organization and any negotiations on Jerusalem, Israel’s declared eternal and indivisible capital… Baker has been trying to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for preliminary talks in Cairo on Israel’s plan for elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip.

The elections would be a step toward limited autonomy for the territories, which Israel has occupied since 1967… Those proposals were intended to meet PLO demands to include outside Palestinians in the talks but still meet Israel’s demand to talk only to residents of the territories… In the Gaza strip yesterday, two Arab teen-agers were wounded by army gunfire during clashes, Palestinian sources said.

An army spokesman reported that one Palestinian was wounded. A curfew in the Rafah camp and town was lifted after seven days. Rafah schools remained closed by military order to prevent disturbances.

Israel censoring news of Soviet immigrants. Israeli military censors made deletions from this article. JERUSALEM — Israel said yesterday it was censoring news reports about Soviet Jewish immigrants to protect them from Arab attacks and denied trying to muzzle criticism of the immigrants’ settlement in occupied territories.

‘It is not our aim to use the censor for political purposes or for any reason other than security,’ Avi Pazner, media adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, told Israel Radio. ‘There were a number of threats by terrorist organizations, Palestinian and otherwise, to strike at immigration, to strike at immigrants,’ he said.

Israel’s military censors, in a one-line statement issued Friday, ordered local and foreign journalists to submit all stories on Soviet Jewish immigration to censorship before publication. They offered no reasons.

Pazner said Israel would bar three elements from stories — how the Soviet immigrants traveled to Israel, their numbers and the names of people dealing with the matter. ‘We can’t and don’t want to censor the entire subject of immigration from the Soviet Union. It would be ludicrous,’ he said.

Arab states and the United States, Israel’s closest ally, have objected to the prospect of the current wave of Soviet immigrants settling in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip.

The future of lands that were seized in the 1967 Six-Day War and are home to 1.75 million Palestinians is at the center of U.S. efforts to convene Israeli-Palestinian peace talks… ‘No one can check the behavior of the Palestinian citizen in the occupied territories,’ Mahmoud Abbas, a member of the PLO executive committee, told London’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.”

Context added by this archive

The sidebar carries its own warning in italics: Israeli military censors made deletions from this article. On the clipping, two phrases about the occupied West Bank and Gaza are underlined by hand where the censor’s deletions fell.

A correction

arrived captioned Philadelphia Inquirer 1918; names Shamir, Baker and Soviet Jewish immigration, placing it in 1990

Cite this clipping

This clipping is read closely in the section below

• What the censor left behind

More from (newspaper unidentified)

• Kaiser Wilhelm's Trip to Palestine(newspaper unidentified) · 9 April 1898
• States the Arab Point of View Concerning Palestine(newspaper unidentified) · 1 January 1946
• Forcing Palestine to Become a World Problem(newspaper unidentified) · 1 January 1947
• Arab Terrorist Spokesman Killed As Auto Explodes(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
• Bomb in car kills Arab guerrilla chief(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
• Arab Who Claimed Massacre Credit Dies(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
• 57 more from this paper in the full text →

More from the 1990s

• PALESTINIANS MARK ’76 LAND SEIZURESThe New York Times · 30 March 1990
• KILLINGS OF ARABS BY ISRAELIS DROPThe New York Times · 4 April 1990
• Christians in Israel protest settlementThe Daily Press · 24 April 1990
• Israelis Consider Reopening the Palestinians' UniversitiesThe New York Times · 15 May 1990
• Report Charges Violence Against Arab ChildrenThe New York Times · 17 May 1990
• 3 more Palestinians killedThe Orlando Sentinel · 22 May 1990
• All 374 clippings from the 1990s →

In these collections