A national emergency conference of Jewish leadership on Middle East peace has been called for Jan. 25-26 in Washington by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Conference chairman, said that participants will include representatives of all of the 24 constituent organizations of the Presidents Conference and that invitations were being extended to major leaders of Jewish communities and others.
The two-day emergency conference will be held against the background of rising concern in the American Jewish community over what has been described as a “serious erosion” in State Department policy on a Middle East settlement. In issuing the call for the meeting, Rabbi Schacter cited a Dec. 22 meeting between a Conference delegation and Secretary of State William P. Rogers, at which Rabbi Schacter conveyed to Mr. Rogers the Jewish community’s “deep concern and apprehension” over recent United States proposals for a Middle East settlement.
After the meeting, Rabbi Schacter issued a statement warning that the United States plan for a Middle East settlement would “strengthen Arab intransigence and Soviet designs and lead to an imposed settlement rather than a negotiated peace between the parties — the stated policy of our Government.” The emergency meeting is expected to be the largest and most representative gathering of American Jewish leadership since a similar conference in Washington during the 1967 Six-Day War.
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