Warns Coordinated Action Needed to Bar ‘erosion’ of Us Mideast Policy

The chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said this weekend that unified and coordinated action by the American Jewish community was necessary to help prevent any “erosion” of current United States policies in the Middle East. Rabbi Herschel Schacter said American Jews had been “heartened” by President Johnson’s warm welcome of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of Israel, encouraged by the President’s support of Israel’s quest for peace and gratified by his recognition that Israel’s security required new military deterrents.

He warned, however, that continued American political and military aid to Israel would depend on strengthening public understanding of the identity of American and Israeli interests in the Middle East. He pledged that the conference, over which he was recently installed as chairman, would devote its entire resources to this task, noting that “we speak with the authentic voice of the American Jewish community.”

Rabbi Shachter took issue with the State Department position that American support of Israel would cause the Arab countries increasingly to look to the Soviet Union and denounced the State Department position on Jerusalem. He remarked that the State Department had criticized Israel for condemning property in Jerusalem for a needed housing development but pointed out that the State Department had not protested when Jordan “brazenly and brutally expropriated the ancient Jewish quarter of the Old City, destroyed historic synagogues and desecrated the hallowed cemeteries of the Mount of Olives.”