Spokesmen for two national Jewish organizations urged the Republican platform committee yesterday to draft planks recommending continuing United States support for Israel and maintenance of American power in the Mediterranean to offset Soviet military strength there. The spokesmen were Felix Putterman, executive director of the Jewish War Veterans and Prof. Howard Adelson, president and Dr. Marnin Feinstein, director of public affairs, respectively, for the United Zionists-Revisionists, who spoke for that organization.
Another group testifying before platform subcommittee seven, headed by Texas Sen. John Towers, the American Committee for Justice in the Middle East, proposed that the United Nations impose a settlement in the area with the help of US pressure on Israel.
Putterman testified in place of JWV Commander Jerome Cohen, who is presiding at the JWV national convention in Houston, Texas. Putterman described “a modernized, efficient and vigilant fleet in the Mediterranean” as “the linchpin in the free world security system.” He called Israel “a reliable and invaluable ally worthy, by any standards, of continued American confidence and support.”
Putterman said the Soviet Union was continuing to use four Egyptian ports, despite the recent Egyptian ouster of Soviet military personnel, as well as ports in Lebanon and others “soon to open in Iraq and another in India.” Putterman said that “by contrast,” the US Sixth Fleet had not “a single port” in the Middle East. Reading Commander Cohen’s prepared statement, Putterman continued that the JWV recommended use of “liberty ports” for US ships and personnel in Lebanon, Egypt and Israel.
Prof. Adelson urged the Republicans to have the US “remove the Middle East from the bargaining table” in US-Soviet negotiations. He said, in his prepared statement that the official US policy since 1970 “has served the United States extremely well,” crediting US policy for the expulsion of Soviet personnel from Egypt and “strengthening” of US influence in the region. Besides maintaining Israel’s “deterrent strength” at “maximum efficiency,” the Zionist Revisionist statement added, “It is equally important” to encourage Israel’s economic and scientific development to help absorb the thousands of newcomers entering annually.
The Committee for Justice in the Middle East statement said its proposals were “approved by the Western Federation of American, Lebanese and Syrian Associations representing 600,000 American citizens of Middle East ancestry in 12 western states.” David L. Hendry, described as chairman of the committee and a professor at Colorado University, had been scheduled to read the statement but it was read for him by Michael Khoury, 75, an electrical engineer of Miami Shores, Florida. Khoury, who said he was born in Lebanon, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he was not a member of the committee and did not know Prof. Hendry but agreed to read the statement after he was asked to do so by Prof. Hendry’s secretary.
The statement said that in 1948, Israel “essentially” violated the armistice lines laid down by the United Nations in 1947 in its “partition plan.” The statement said if Security Council Resolution 242 to Israel to withdraw from occupied areas “is to be implemented, it will have to be imposed.” The statement added, “frankly, since the United States is the only major arms supplier and consistent diplomat supporter for Israel, unless our nation is willing to supply the necessary pressures to facilitate a UN-imposed settlement, there is little chance of a lasting peace.”
JEWISH WOMEN URGE SOCIAL PROGRAMS
The National Council of Jewish Women advocated to the resolutions committee yesterday that “our government must give priority” to programs which “meet the economic, social and physical needs of all the people.” Mrs. Philip Bloom, president of the NCJW’s Greater Miami section and a member of the organization’s National Affairs Committee, presented a statement generally construed as liberal on education, welfare reform, child-care services, consumer protection, health, civil liberties and foreign policy. On the Middle East, the NCJW will join in a statement tomorrow by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Mrs. Bloom said the NCJW favors busing as “a method, one among many, of achieving integrated schools”; quick federalization of welfare, a “work-incentive program” and a “salary-incentive plan that rewards those who are working”; “full subsidization” of child care for families “above the poverty level, but not able to afford the full costs of care”; federal programs to eliminate hunger in the United States; a “comprehensive national health insurance program”; an “independent consumer-protection agency”; the abolishment of the Subversive Activities Control Board “or any other inquisitorial agency which jeopardizes our fundamental individual rights,” and a foreign policy that will “terminate immediately our involvement in Vietnam,” strengthen the United Nations and eliminate “all barriers to the free flow of trade.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
