The Rev. Jesse Jackson said today that he regretted remarks he may have made that alienated the Jewish community and felt there is a need for “a summit meeting” between Blacks and Jews very soon.
Jackson spoke in reply to a question on the NBC-TV “Meet the Press” program broadcast from San Francisco where he will be one of the principal speakers at the Democratic National Convention which opens there tomorrow.
Asked if he regretted not having disavowed Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan who slurred the Jewish religion and called Israel an “outlaw” state last month, Jackson replied, “My greatest regret is that there are those who try to impose upon a brotherhood relationship a ‘Siamitic twin’ relationship.”
Jackson was apparently referring to the fact that while he publicly repudiated Farrakhan’s views, he refused to disavow the Black Muslim leader’s support for his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. On June 28, when Jackson was enroute home from Cuba, his campaign office in Washington issued a statement on his behaif calling “reprehensible” Farrakhan’s use of the term “gutter religion” to describe Judaism. The statement declared that Farrakhan’s inflammatory remarks had no place “in my own thinking or in this campaign.”
Jackson said on “Meet the Press” today that “None of us can bear the burden of each other’s responsibilities and I simply reserve the right to represent my point of view. None of us should be locked and bound as I have been by other peoples’ points of view.”
In his latest tirade against Jews, Jackson last week accused American Jewish leaders of trying to “make me a pariah and isolate our support, and attempt to isolate me from the masses.”
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.
