Miller: Sale of U.S. Jets to Saudi Arabia Leaves U.S. Jews Uneasy

Rabbi Israel Miller, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, criticized tonight the sale of American F-5E Jet fighters to Saudi Arabia and the plan to train Saudi Arabian pilots to fly the Jets. Rabbi Miller said the action “leaves us uneasy, to put it mildly,” adding that “the standard clause forbidding the transfer of these planes to another country without the permission of the United States is not reassuring.”

He observed that France had a similar restriction when it sold Mirage fighter planes to Libya but that Egypt “had no hesitation in demanding that Libya break its promise and transfer the planes to Cairo.” Rabbi Miller, noting that the Libyan Jets were a part of the Egyptian Air Force that fought against Israel in the Yom Kippur War, declared, “We shudder to think of what might happen in the event a new Arab-Israel conflict breaks out and Egypt again demands that a fellow member of the Arab League repudiate our standard clause in a standard contract made with the West.”