An advisor to President Reagan on foreign policy matters assured the B’nai B’rith International Board of Governors here that the President is inherently sympathetic to Israel and realizes the Camp David process is the only viable path to peace in the Middle East.
Dr. Amos Perlmutter, counsellor to the National Security Council and professor of politics and government at American University, told Jewish leaders from around the world at their annual winter meeting that Reagan is “dedicated” to Israel. However, he added
Egypt will be the United States’ focal point in any defense of the Middle East and Saudi Arabia will “continue as an ally par excellence.”
Perlmutter, the author of nine books on the Middle East and politics, said the Administration doesn’t particularly like the idea being promoted by America’s European allies for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East.
Describing the meeting last June of the European Economic Community in Venice as “the Munich of 1981,” Perlmutter said that both the British and French are working particularly hard in an attempt to “deterrorize” the Palestinian Liberation Organization and “give the Arabs what they want” in return for oil.
The Board of Governors approved three resolutions related to the Middle East. The board urged the Reagan Administration “not only to reject PLO participation” in the peace process, but “to persuade those governments which have given the PLO recognition to repudiate such recognition and to sever all contact” with the PLO.
The Board called for support for Israel “in its search for peace with all of its neighbors” and stated that the United States “must not” reward the PLO “and the other Arab rejectionist forces.”
The United States, the Board added, “must rally” its Western allies and others “genuinely interested in peace” to reject the call of the recent Islamic Conference in Saudi Arabia for a holy war against Israel.
The B’nai B’rith leaders also accused the United Nations of maintaining a double standard and selective morality in the areas of peace-keeping and human rights. They recommended “the use of every legitimate and appropriate means, including financial” to terminate the PLO-directed Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Special Unit on Palestinian Rights.
At a symposium on the Moral Majority, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, national director of interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee, and Meyer Eisenberg, national chairman of the Laws Committee of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and president-elect of District Five, were critical of some of the aims and methods of the Moral Majority. But they suggested that the Jewish community would benefit by conducting dialogues with the leaders of that movement in order to educate them on issues of Jewish concern and win their support on those issues.
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.
