5 Rabbis, Manhandled by UN Guards, Seek Meeting with Scali

Five rabbis who claim that they and 120 Jewish student demonstrators were manhandled by United Nations security guards who forcibly ejected them from the UN visitors lobby Monday, have asked for a meeting with Ambassador John Scali. “to discuss this matter and to attempt to insure that the United Nations…does not become a forum for wholesale violation of civil rights.” A spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the UN told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this morning that the rabbis’ letter, dated May 21, had not been received. The signers were Rabbis Steven Riskin. Avraham Weiss, Saul Berman, Reuben Grodner and Benjamin Blech.

Yesterday, Rabbi Berman and Rabbi Blech and a delegation of Yeshiva University students met Deputy Mayor Judah Gribetz at City Hall to protest the incident. Gribetz said he would inform Mayor Abraham D. Beame and “take appropriate action with UN authorities.” The letter to Ambassador Scali contained a detailed account of what the rabbis say happened when they and the students demonstrated peacefully in the UN lobby to demand that the world organization “assert moral leadership to prevent further terror in the Middle East” in the wake of the Maalot and Kiryat Shemona tragedies.

“We informed the deputy chief of security that we would be willing to leave as soon as we made a statement to the press,” the rabbis’ letter said. “We indicated to him that we had no intention of being arrested. The demonstrators were students, many of them young women, and in the many years of demonstrations we have participated in we have always avoided violence in any form,” the rabbis wrote.

CHARGE GUARDS WITH BRUTALITY

They claimed in the letter that when a reporter began to interview Rabbi Weiss, the entire group was subjected to an unprovoked assault by about 30 UN guards without warning. “Many of us were brutally beaten and dragged out of the lobby One of the students was bit at the base of his spine so severely that he could not walk. One Yeshiva University student, Michael Burr, had his hand broken by the guards; a number of the younger women, also from Yeshiva University, were treated at Beth Israel Hospital and now have their arms in slings,” the letter to Scali said.

It also claimed that the guards had removed their shields before they attacked the group to avoid identification. “We came to the United Nations seeking an end to violence and we were met with violence. Certainly the civil and human rights of American citizens does not end at the United Nations gate,” the rabbis wrote.

James Finore, acting chief of security at the UN. denied yesterday that the guards had used excessive violence or anti-Semitic expletives as charged by the group. According to a UN press officer, Finore said he had talked to the demonstrators for 30 minutes before they were ejected. There may have been some injuries on both sides in the struggle but all were able to leave the scene without help, Finore was quoted as saying.