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I.r.o. Refuses Comment on Senate Charge of Anti-jewish Feeling Among Staff Members

June 29, 1949
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A spokesman for the International Refugee organization declined comment today on a charge in Senate report that “there was considerable anti-Jewish feeling among a number of the staff members.” The charge as made in a report on I.R.O. operations released by the Senate committee on expenditures in the Executive Department.

Sen. Owen Brewster of Maine first threw light on the report in a debate on the I.B.O. He quoted a section which stated that a “top-level official, following the position of his government, maintained there should be no further I.R.O. movement of Jews to Palestine until a complete solution and agreement was reached between the Arab countries and the new state of Israel, with U.N. approval.”

Such Israeli-Arab agreement has not been reached, Sen. Brewster said, “as a result insubstantial measure–if we believe current reports–of the intervention of our own State Department to block the agreement which was reached between Egypt and Israel as to that situation.”

The committee report also said: “The subcommittee learned that considerable internal conflict arose in connection with the movement of Jewish displaced persons to Israel.” It added that “as staff discussions developed, it became quite clear that there was considerable anti-Jewish feeling among a number of the staff members.”

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