Former Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that failure by the Senate to ratify the United Nations Genocide Convention will put the United States in a “difficult” position when it meets with 34 other signatories to the Helsinki accord in Belgrade on June 15 to review the implementation of that accord.
Appearing on behalf of the Ad Hoc Committee on Human Rights and Genocide Treaties, which represents 52 national organizations, including all of the major Jewish organizations in this country, Goldberg told the Senate committee, which began its hearings on the Genocide Convention Tuesday, that President Carter’s strong stand on human rights will be seriously undermined if the Senate fails to ratify the Convention. Goldberg, who was a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said that such a failure would mock U.S. protests against acts of genocide elsewhere in the world.
Betty Kaye Taylor, assistant director of the Jewish Labor Committee, who is serving as executive secretary of the Ad Hoc Committee on Human Rights and Genocide Treaties, said today that, if the past pattern holds, the Senate will be flooded by letters from ultra-right groups who oppose ratification. “It is urgent,” she said, “that Jewish community organizations and others concerned with human rights counteract this with a massive campaign of our own.”
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.
