ABA, Champions of Law, Should End Shameful Tie

The American Bar Assn., perhaps the most prestigious organization of attorneys in the world, is certainly in a position to choose its friends. And most of the time it chooses them quite carefully. How curious, then, that the ABA has chosen to befriend as infamous an organization as the Assn. of Soviet Lawyers.

Far from being a representative association of Soviet attorneys, the ASL is a government-sponsored organ, open only to a select few attorneys picked by the Communist Party apparatus. Its leaders are the prosecutors and judges who implement Soviet policy that sends countless political prisoners to labor camps and psychiatric hospitals. There does not appear to be any rank-and-file membership.

The function of the association has been, for the most part, to provide juridical legitimization of Soviet persecution of Jews, human-rights activists and other dissenters. In recent years it has taken on a more specific role, one of particular interest to Jews, as the purveyor of some of the most blatant anti-Semitic propaganda in the world.

In addition, through extensive ties to the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, the lawyers’ organization endeavors to legitimize that discredited Soviet tool of anti-Semitic propaganda.

There are close personal ties between the two groups. For example, Samuil Zivs, the chief spokesman for the Anti-Zionist Committee, is vice chairman and a prime spokesman for the lawyers’ group as well.

Of greater significance is the two groups’ collaboration on anti-Semitic projects. For example, they co-published “The White Book,” sort of a modern “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in 1985.

“The White Book” asserts that Zionism is the political and moral equivalent of Nazism. But its main target is Soviet Jewry, particularly Jewish refuseniks. One can imagine the effect of a massdistributed book, published by the Assn. of Soviet Lawyers, with headings like “Under the Guise of Studying Hebrew” and “To Be a Refusenik Is Profitable.”

Is it any coincidence that several Hebrew teachers were arrested for “antiSoviet slander” at the time of the publication of “The White Book”?

And who prosecuted these venal Zionist propagandists in Hebrew teachers’ clothing? Who presided over their trials? Members of the Assn. of Soviet Lawyers, of course.

Thus one organization has publicly accused Hebrew teachers of anti-Soviet activity, prosecuted and sentenced them.

The American Bar Assn. has signed a “Declaration of Cooperation” with this paragon of judicial propriety, pledging both groups “to advance the rule of law.” The rule of law is not a concept that the Soviet lawyers appear to be much concerned with.

Human-rights groups and human-rights activists within the Soviet Union fear that the ABA, by signing such a document, has conferred on the ASL a seal of approval. It is as if the Soviet group has become an organization dedicated to the rule of law by virtue of a declaration that it has signed with the ABA. It seems absurd, yet it is this very act of legitimization--and, by inference, the legitimization of the entire Soviet legal system--that makes the agreement with the American organization so important.

ABA leaders claim that the declaration will allow American attorneys access and influence in the Soviet leadership, thus enabling them to further human-rights goals. But unofficial contacts were occurring before the declaration; a formal agreement was not necessary to facilitate them. Furthermore, progress on human rights has come as a result of pressure, not formal declarations.

By signing the agreement, ABA leaders lost potential leverage for pressure. In effect, the ABA has said to the ASL: “We don’t care about your involvement in repression, and we don’t care about your anti-Semitic activities.”

In response to questions about its relations with the Soviets, ABA leaders have exhibited surprising insensitivity. A year ago an ABA spokesman dismissed concerns about the Soviet group’s anti-Semitism as “irrelevant.” Later, ABA President Eugene Thomas claimed that Jewish protesters lacked objectivity because they were “scarred by the Holocaust.”

Early this week the ABA will debate resolutions calling for the abrogation of its agreement with the ASL. Abrogation is the only avenue to correct the shameful collaboration with anti-Semitism.

It would send a message to the Soviet lawyers and to the Soviets in general that must be heard: If you desire legitimacy, act legitimately.