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Jewish Congress Adopts Budget of $1,700,000 for 1956 Activities

February 13, 1956
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A budget of $1,700,000 for carrying on the work of the American and World Jewish. Congresses in 1956 was adopted here today at the concluding session of a two-day joint meeting of the American Jewish Congress national executive and administrative committees.

The meeting urged the Department of Justice to investigate the anti-Negro riot at the University of Alabama, and suggested that the Department use us full powers to prosecute all persons who seek to intimadate American citizens in the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed them by the United States Constitution. The meeting also commended President Eisenhower for his message to Congress last week recommending relaxation in the existing immigration laws.

Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress announced at the meeting that the American Jewish Congress would submit to the State Department later this week a White Paper dealing with the anti-Jewish activities of Arab League countries. These activities, he said, fall into three categories: 1. The commercial boycott of American Jewish businesses; 2. The denial of visas and the right of travel to American Jews and 3. The establishment and subvention of large-scale Arab propaganda centers for the purpose of disseminating anti-Jewish doctrines in the United States.

Dr. Goldstein declared that it was disturbing that this discrimination is in large part supported and made possible by an unaccountable indifference displayed by U.S. authorities. “Citing the refusal of Arab governments to grant visas to American Jews, he asserted that it was an” established American principle that no foreign government could discriminate between one American passport and another. He suggested that if any group of American citizens was not permitted to travel to some country the State Department should forbid all American citizens from traveling there. The U.S. simultaneously should refuse to admit Arab travelers, he said.

Arab propagandists in the U.S., Dr. Goldstein charged, are working closely with professional anti-Semites. Heading up this effort is the Arab Information Center in New York, directed by Abdul Kamal Rahim, former Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. and now Yemen’s representative at the United Nations. Another active and malicious dispenser of anti-Jewish propaganda has been Syria’s Ambassador to the United States. Dr. Farid Zeineddine, who propagates the line of the Elders of Zion forgeries and Nazi racialism, “he said. Both of these Arab representatives enjoy diplomatic immunity. Dr. Goldstein called upon the State Department to declare them person non grata since they have been “slandering, villifying and impugning he loyalties of large section of American citizens.”

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