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Professors’ Group Urges Nixon to Veto State Department Middle East Policy

January 26, 1970
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A group called American Professors for Peace in the Middle East urged President Richard M. Nixon today to “veto the short-sighted maneuvers of a handful of professional State Department Arabists” who, the group contended, were not only jeopardizing Israel’s security and future existence, but endangered America’s own vital interests in the Middle East. The call to President Nixon to see to it that the latest State Department proposals for a Mideast settlement are withdrawn, was contained in a full page advertisement published in the New York Times. The advertisement sought to demonstrate that Secretary of State William P. Rogers’ Dec. 9 proposals for a settlement between Israel and Egypt and the subsequently published U.S. recommendations for an Israeli-Jordan peace constituted appeasement of the Arabs, a strengthening of the Soviet position in the Arab world and a blatant attempt to impose a Big Power solution in the Mideast conflict.

The appearance of the advertisement coincided with the opening in Washington, D.C. of an American-Jewish leadership conference on Mideast peace. The advertisement, signed by Harold Weisberg, chairman of the Boston chapter of American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, accused Secretary Rogers and the State Department of a “sell-out” of Israel and American interests along the lines of the 1938 Munich Pact.

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