CCAR Urges American Red Cross Action to End Icrc Ban on Magen David Adom

The Central Conference of American Rabbis has urged the American Red Cross to withhold financial support from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as long as it refuses to recognize Israel’s Magen David Adom as it does the Red Crescent of the Moslem countries and the Red Lion and Sun of Iran.

In a letter last week to George M. Elsey, president of the American Red Cross, Rabbi Joseph B. Glaser, executive vice-president of the CCAR, the Reform rabbinical movement, acknowledged that “the American Red Cross has taken the proper public position with respect to the politicized position of the International Red Cross not to recognize Magen David Adom.” But, he added, “There is more that the American Red Cross could do. I am referring specifically to the substantial financial support given the International Red Cross by the American Red Cross. I know that recommendations along this line have been made and buried.”

RESOLUTION SHELVED

Rabbi Glaser’s reference was to a resolution introduced at the recent American Red Cross convention in Hartford, Conn. by Mark K. Powers, a member of the board of the Harrisburg, Pa. Red Cross and cochairman of the area disaster services unit. It stated, in part, that “Whereas the American Red Cross has been continuously at the forefront of the movement for recognition of the Magen David Adom…it be resolved that until Magen David Adom is admitted to its rightful place in the Red Cross family, that the American Red Cross will not support financially any of the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies. The convention referred the resolution for administrative action pending a full report by December 31.

Glaser wrote: “I think the time has come for the American Red Cross to put its money where its mouth is, thereby refusing to continue to support any further the hypocrisy of an organization which, for purely political reasons, denied the full lifesaving and humanitarian services everyone else is entitled to to the Jewish people.”