August 11 , 2008 / 10 Av 5768
Dear Friends,
Since last Friday night, with the eruption of battles in the South Ossetia region of Georgia, the Jewish Agency embarked on an extensive and immediate operation in Israel and in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to render all the necessary assistance to the Georgian Jewish community and especially to the tiny Jewish community of 200 Jews in the city of Gori, which is adjacent to the battle zone.
On the eve of the Sabbath we opened two situation rooms - the first in Jerusalem and the second in Tbilisi. These rooms have been working nonstop 24 hours a day. In coordination with the Foreign Ministry and with the Liaison Office (“Nativ”) we began immediate operation in two spheres of activity. The first was to provide answers to Jews in Georgia who would require information, support or assistance in evacuation and rescue. The second was to establish contact and transmit information between young people from Georgia, who are staying in Israel in the framework of Jewish Agency programs and particularly pupils of Naaleh and Sela, and their families in Georgia as well as establishing links between family relatives in Israel who are apprehensive about the fate of their loved ones in Georgia.
Despite the Sabbath, Jewish Agency offices in Tbilisi opened immediately at the direction of the Jewish Agency emissary to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Grigori Brodsky and his wife Larissa, the regional treasurer and the front line situation room was put into operation.
Over the last few days we aided in the evacuation of Jews who remained in Gori to other cities throughout Georgia via the personal and devoted handling of Dr. Besso, the local coordinator of the Jewish Agency in the town. Dr. Besso is a physician by profession and a scion to a warm and active Jewish family in the community, who is performing his holy work with devotion and with personal responsibility, and he has taken upon himself to assist the Jews of Gori in this difficult hour. Any approach was handled by him on a personal basis and in certain instances Dr. Besso even went to the houses of families with whom contact had been lost and dealt with their evacuation from the town while allocating vehicles and assistance in transit points and passage on roads that had been closed by local units of the armed forces.
Alex Katz, the head of the JAFI FSU Office, departed yesterday for Georgia in order to be on hand in Tbilisi and to provide the local Jewish community with the sense of our mutual responsibility towards it as well as moral support, reinforcement, and all the assistance they may require.
Up to now scores of applications have been logged in our Tbilisi office from Jews who are interested in immigrating to Israel. In order to handle these requests appropriately, an emissary from Nativ is going out there. The Immigration and Absorption Department in Jerusalem is gearing up in tandem to beef up, as may be needed and as developments warrant, the staff of the mission in Tbilisi with additional emissaries and workers from the other countries of the FSU.
The situation room in Jerusalem is working under the guidance of Bennie Lidsky from the JAFI FSU Office, on a reinforced basis, to serve as a bridge between family relatives in Israel and their loved ones in Georgia and has up to now handled scores of calls that arrived from all parts of Israel as well as from the United States from the time that the battles began in the Ossetia region. The Treasurer of the Jewish Agency, Haggai Merom, who returned on Friday from a visit to the region is closely following developments and is in contact with our emissaries on site.
The situation in Ossetia has not yet been resolved and we are continuing to monitor developments in the region. The Immigration and Absorption Department, headed by Eli Cohen, is prepared to provide all necessary assistance, including the accelerated handling of those who want to examine the options for aliyah to Israel. At the same time the department has begun preparing absorption plans in Israel that will prove conducive to immigrants from Georgia and from the countries of the Caucasus, typified by a lifestyle in the framework of their extended families.
This is not the first time, that the Jewish Agency is operating an emergency network to save Jews in Georgia. At the start of the 90s during the bloody civil war in the region of Abkhazia in the northern section of Georgia, it was Jewish Agency personnel, Karol Ungar of blessed memory and Eli Yizhaki, may he live a long life, who managed one of the most dramatic rescue operations of extricating Jews from the region and bringing most of them to Israel. Since the Iron Curtain opened the vast majority of the Jewish community immigrated to Israel and according to statistics about 9000 Jews have remained in Georgia, the majority in Tbilisi.
The Jewish Agency, as a bridge between the State of Israel and the Jewish people in the Diaspora, stands at the forefront of activity on behalf of Jewish communal security in every place in the world. Past present and future it has done, and will continue to do what it takes to assist Jews both in days of peace and normalcy and even more so in periods of crisis and deprivation.
I would like to thank all the wonderful people, Jewish Agency workers in Israel and the Diaspora, in the FSU Office, in the Immigration and Absorption Department and particularly to our emissaries and workers in Tbilisi and Gori, who mobilized with a sense of mission, commitment and personal obligation to rescue the Jews of Gori and continue to work unflaggingly to provide all the necessary assistance to the Jewish communities throughout Georgia. This is a moment of pride for the Jewish Agency family, who can count these people amongst its workers and emissaries. This is a moment that reinforces the sense of mutual responsibility between us, the people that dwells in Zion, and the Jewish people in the Diaspora.
We are hopeful that the winds of war in the region will quickly abate and we pray for the safety and security of our brethren in Georgia.
Sincerely,
Zeev Bielski
zeevik@jafi.org