Rev. Jackson Scores Brown

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson the Black clergyman who heads Operation Push, has criticized Gen. George S. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his remarks last month about Jewish “influence,” terming those remarks “a disservice to the public.” The chairman of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) made his criticism in a letter to Brown, which was made public today. Referring to Brown’s remark that “Jews own the banks and newspapers of this country,” Rev. Jackson said “this kind of distortion of economic reality was widely used by Hitler’s propaganda machine to produce fascism and World War II.”

The Black leader told Brown that it was “quite easy for you to confirm the fact” that the nation’s giant banking concerns were not “Jewish” institutions. Rev. Jackson also said that “the canard” about Jewish ownership of newspapers sounded like “a variation” on the “theme” of former Vice-President Spiro Agnew “that the newspapers in America are too liberal.”

Citing Brown’s “position of authority” and access to public media, Rev. Jackson told the General that “to be careless in your public pronouncements is to be irresponsible.” He added that the existence of a pro-Israel lobby in Washington was “a fairly obvious fact” but that to associate that fact “with an exaggerated reference to the Jews owning the banks and the newspapers is really to spread ignorance.” The Black leader added that he hoped Brown would take “very seriously the import of your remarks and consciously avoid a repetition of such an unfortunate incident in the future.”