Sen. Walter Mondale (D., Minn.) has urged President Nixon to call on the Syrian government to let the remaining 4,000 Syrian Jews emigrate to the United States. In a resolution introduced in the Senate last week. Mondale said that to allow the Syrian Jews into the U.S. would “in no way exacerbate the military or political situation” in the Middle East which President Nixon will visit on a trip beginning tomorrow.
Mondale told the Senate he was urging that the U.S. open its doors to the Syrian Jews because of the Syrian government’s ban on emigration out of fear the Jews might go to Israel. The Syrian Jews are being “treated as hostages” in the Syrian conflict with Israel, he said, adding they are “by any standard oppressed.”
Meanwhile the Committee for Rescue of Syrian Jewry has urged President Nixon to raise the question of treatment of Syrian Jews during his visit to Damascus and to urge the Syrian government to free “those unjustly imprisoned.” In a telegram to Nixon by Abraham Dwek, president, and Rabbi Joseph Harari, director of the committee, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based group also asked the President to tell the Syrians that the U.S. will offer asylum to any Syrian Jew who wants to come here. There are about 25,000 Jews of Syrian origin in the U.S., according to the Committee.
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.
