Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, today called for “a pilot project of open skies and aerial and ground inspection system in the Middle East.” He said that this project should be applied to the Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian, Syrian and Saudi Arabian border areas.
He spoke at the quadrennial national convention of the Workmen’s Circle, largest Jewish fraternal organization numbering about 90,000 members in the United States and Canada (Last month Premier Ben Gurion of Israel officially announced that Israel would welcome an open skies inspection system in the Middle East as one effort to calm fears and promote a Middle East settlement.)
Nathan Chanin, general secretary of the organization, addressing the delegates, challenged the notion that Jews must be neutral in the East-West “cold war.” Citing the recent anti-Jewish utterances by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, he said: “No Jew can swear allegiance to both Soviet imperialism and the ideals of democracy. The Soviet Union has proven herself a blackmailer in the Middle East and a double-talker in the United Nations.”
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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.