Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, said yesterday that there could be no peace in the Middle East without Soviet participation in the process. “I am sure they (the Russians) want peace but they will not allow a Pax Americana and without Soviet participation in the negotiations, war might be resumed in a year or even a half a year,” the world Jewish leader told a press conference here.
Dr. Goldmann said he was disengaging himself from public Jewish functions because “they begin to bore me.” Nevertheless, he expressed his views on a variety of subjects. With regard to the new Israeli-Egyptian interim accord in Sinai, he said, “I am against the Kissinger step-by-step policy, but time won is still time gained.” He said he did not believe that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat “would never resort to force, but I do believe him that he would agree to a genuine peace if Israel withdrew from all Arab territories except Jerusalem. The Arabs recognize the special problem with Jerusalem.”
The WJC leader despaired of the future of South American Jewry because “there is no leadership. The Zionist parties are ineffective and there is a growing South American Jewish youth which disengages itself from Judaism and Zionism but could be very important.”
Dr. Goldmann said he was “not at all confident” that an agreement will be reached with West Germany for the payment of some 600 million Marks to holocaust victims who have not received compensation until now. As for the anti-Zionist resolutions expected to be introduced this week in the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, Goldmann declared, “This is a new form of anti-Semitism.”
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.
