The U.S. Government was urged last night by Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee, to take the lead in effecting an immediate rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states. Such a peace, Mr. Blaustein told a meeting of the A.J.C.’s national executive committee here, would establish the Near East as a “vital and strong outpost of the democratic nations.”
The A.J.C. leader also appealed to the United States Government to extend grants-in-aid to the Israel Government, maintaing that such aid would help Israel resolve her most pressing economic difficulties. Some 100 delegates from 50 cities are participating in the executive committee meeting, which will continue through tomorrow.
Mr. Blaustein said that “Israel is the best friend America has in the Near East” and voiced the belief that the Arab countries would align themselves with the Western bloc if “there is peace between them and Israel.” For this reason, he emphasized, the United Nations–particularly the U.S. and Britain–must “exert themselves to even a greater degree than heretofore toward that peace objective.”
The A.J.C. leader, pointing to the Jewish state’s serious economic situation, which he attributed to her policy of unrestricted immigration, declared that if grants-in-aid were extended to Israel, “there must be no lessening in the contributions of American Jews to Israel, as this may be the last chance for Jews behind the Iron Curtain to get out and come to Israel.” He added that Israel’s people “want democracy and will oppose vigorously any form of totalitarianism from within and without.” Mr. Blaustein held that a “Jew cannot live up to the tenets of his religion and be a Communist; they are incompatible.”
(In New York, Democratic mayoralty candidate Ferdinand Pecora, in a letter to Benjamin G. Browdy, president of the Zionist Organization of America, urged that the U.S. Government extend immediately a grant-in-aid of $500,000,000 to Israel to assist the new state in its present economic crisis. He termed Israel an “casis of democracy in the Middle East” which merits the “wholshearted support of the American people.”)
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