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World Jewish News
Israeli "children of Chernobyl" Convey Letter to President of Iran
10.03.2009
Israelis who repatriated to Israel from the Chernobyl disaster area passed a letter through the Chabad mission in Brussels to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The letter contained a request to halt work on the nuclear program.
The Maariv newspaper notes that the authors of this message repatriated to Israel in the mid-80s from the Chernobyl accident area. In their letter, which was translated into Farsi and handed to the Iranian embassy in Brussels by the representatives of the Chabad movement, they write that as a result of the Chernobyl disaster both they and their families suffered. Therefore, unlike many Israelis, who underestimate the nuclear threat of Iran, the news reports from Tehran and the international commissions' reports sound frightening to them. They know firsthand what radiation is, and do not want to experience again the horror they felt during the accident.
In this letter, they emphasize that they appeal to the Iranian President with a request to halt work on the nuclear program because of humanitarian considerations, with no regard to the fact that they are Jews and Israeli citizens.
Maariv notes that this message has been initiated by Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Aaronov, the Head of the Chabad organization in Israel and director of "Children of Chernobyl" social organization, which was established at the initiative of Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1986, almost immediately after the disaster.
The authors of the letter also pay Ahmadinejad's attention to the fact that nuclear weapons represent danger to the citizens of his country as well.
As of 2006, the massive repatriation from the USSR - CIS in the late 1980s - early 1990s of the last century has turned the Jewish state into the fourth country in the world in the number of victims of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
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