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Fund Raising For Russian Jews Air Lift To Israel Starts In U.S.
By Steve Smith, IOL Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 15 (IslamOnline) – Israeli Prim Minister Ariel Sharon’s promise to bring one million Jews to Israel has apparently started here in the United States with a massive campaign to seek funding among both American
Jews and Christians.
The U.S. Public Television aired long advertisements Thursday, March 14, urging Christians and Jews to “fulfill Biblical prophecies” and help bring Russian Jews to Israel, “the land of milk and honey,” as the TV commercial said.
The advert campaign was sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians
and Jews, a Chicago-based group founded in 1983 to “build Christian support for
Israel.”
The Fellowship was once hailed by Senator Joe Lieberman, also former vice-
president candidate, as “the best kept secret in the United States”. Lieberman
appeared in the commercial urging Christians to donate for the air lift to Israel.
The commercial asked donation of 700 dollars from Christian Americans to help
settle “a Jewish couple” in Israel or 1400 to buy air tickets for “a family of four.”
Showing sickly, tearful elderly and young Russian Jews, the commercial beseech
the audience to help the Russians Jews overcome “discrimination and anti-Semitism.”
The group says it also wants to help Jews emigrate from the former Soviet Union through its program “On Wings of Eagles”, and assist poor, hungry, elderly and orphaned Jews remaining in the former Soviet Union through Isaiah 58 project
and to meet the immediate and emergency needs of the poor in Israel through
Guardians of Israel – all three programs are funded mostly through donations
from Christian zealots.
“When the seventy-four-year reign of Communism ended and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, the door to freedom opened for one of the most oppressed groups of people on earth—Soviet Jews who were long denied permission to leave
“the land of the north,” said the commercial.
The campaign appealed for religious Christians to give their money to settle the Jews in Israel, most likely in Arab land occupied by Israel, in disregard to U.N. resolutions and to the U.S. foreign policy, which opposes Jewish settlements.
The show touted Israel as the land of “hope and opportunity” and showed
mercy-begging Russian Jews asking to be rescued from what many said was
anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic education.
“Thousands of Soviet Jews are still longing and praying for their chance to leave
the economic woes and rising anti-Semitism of Soviet life, and come to their Jewish homeland On Wings of Eagles,” said the group.
“We are also helping rescue Jewish émigrés in Ethiopia who were discovered to be living in deep poverty and suffering in a remote region of that ancient biblical country of Cush.”
"The Wings program is truly a miracle!" says Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and
president of the Fellowship.
“For centuries, Jews read the biblical prophecies that foretold the return of the
Jewish exiles to their homeland of Israel. Today, fulfillment of these ancient prophecies is taking place before our very eyes.”
Although the Fellowship claimed no direction relations to settlements in Arab land or to Prime Minister Sharon’s plans, the group’s effort is likely to help fund the Israeli plans.
Sharon had used a visit to Moscow to urge Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel. He vowed to bring a million Jews to the Jewish state.
“If you can't come yourself, send your children to Israel, we need another million Jews,'' Sharon had told leaders of Russian Jews.
More than a million Jews emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, but the flow dwindled down after Russians were allowed to emigrate to any country, not just Israel.
In Moscow, Sharon had said that he recognized a key role of Russian Jews in boosting Israel's intellectual potential.
“We would have never reached such heights in technology had it not been for immigration from Russia. We are now about the second best in technology after the U.S.A.,'' he reportedly said at the time.
Sharon often stated his ambitious goal of bringing most of the World Jews in Israel by 2020. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the former Soviet Union, more than 100,000 in Brazil, 150,000 in Mexico, 600,000 in France, 80,000 in South Africa and thousands in
Ethiopia
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