Representatives of the clergy, organized labor and students gathered at the Lincoln Memorial today to express protest and outrage over the 105-4 vote in the United Nations General Assembly last month inviting the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in its debate on the Palestine issue. The demonstration, sponsored by the Greater Washington Jewish Community Council, drew 2000 persons, according to an estimate given the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Sgt. G.M. Wyatt who headed the park police detail.
The UN vote was called a grave threat to the continued existence of the world organization and an act that appalled all fighters for civil rights. Youngsters representing the Baltimore-Washington Union of Jewish Students raised the lags of the United States, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and Israel, the only UN members to vote against the PLO. They also displayed a “Scroll of Dishonor” listing the countries that supported recognition of the terrorist organization.
Placards carried by the demonstrators read, “Palestinians Yes, PLO No,” “Wake up World,” and “Keep the Arab Hitler Out of the UN.” Ernest M. Shalowitz, an attorney who is chairman of the Middle East Committee of the Greater Washington JCC, presided.
William C. Pollard, a Black, who is director of civil rights for the AFL-CIO, said “those minorities who struggled for freedom are doubly concerned with terrorism.” Franklin H. Littell, professor of religion at Temple University and president of Christians Concerned for Israel, likened the UN vote to the world powers’ “crawling before Hitler and Mussolini” a generation ago.
According to F. Stephen McArthur, executive director of the Washington office of the Youth Institute for Peace in the Middle East, “the voiceless Palestinian people were dealt a serious blow when the UN decided for them who their spokesmen would be.” Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, president of the Washington Zionist Federation, said the Jewish people “with malice toward none” will continue to work for justice. “We shall not despair. Jews cannot and will not be destroyed.” he said.
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.
