American support for the Palestinian refugee camps and the appropriation of $100 million for Middle East “requirements” which is actually targeted for Syria, came under heavy attack during debate yesterday on the Foreign Aid Bill in the Senate. But assurances were given by a key Senator that the reduction of funds to assist Soviet Jewish immigrants going to Israel from $40 million to $25 million would be lifted if the immigration flow increases.
Sen. Joseph M. Montoya (D.NM) charged that aid to the Palestinian refugees “has become a political keg of dynamite” and asserted that “it is highly questionable if we have, in the long run, really helped these people at all.” He observed that it was “quite clear that far from being grateful for our help, they (the Palestinians) have learned to hate us for it.” He noted that the American tax-payers, not the Arab states, have been supporting these refugees “and in the process unwittingly created a terrible source of unrest and threat to the peace in the Middle East.”
Sen. Birch Bayh (D.Ind.) sharply questioned the money for Syria. He said the Senate had to “rely on sketchy information from the Administration” on this and other appropriations for Middle Eastern countries. Quoting from the Senate Foreign Aid subcommittee’s report, Bayh referred to pressure on the committee to adopt the funds for Syria.
The report said that “the committee has been hampered by the considerable difficulty we have had in obtaining precise and timely information concerning ‘understandings’ and possible agreements negotiated by the United States and various countries of the Middle East” which has placed Congress and the committee under considerable pressure to accede to the Administration’s requests.
LARGER MIGRATION, MORE MONEY
Questioned by Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D. Minn.) about the reduction in aid money for Soviet Jewish refugees, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D. Hawaii), chairman of the Foreign Aid subcommittee, said he “certainly” would favor a supplemental appropriation when a larger migration took place. Inouye noted that the numbers of Jews leaving the USSR for Israel “actually.” dropped to “almost half.”
He also told the Senate that the U.S. is spending about $5 per capita shifting refugees in Cambodia between villages and about $18 per capita for Palestinian refugees with “not much transportation involved” while “for the Soviet refugees leaving the Soviet Union and going to Israel, we are spending slightly more than a thousand dollars” per capita.
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.
