More than 1,000 delegates from all parts of the country will attend the biennial convention of the American Jewish Congress which opens tomorrow at the Hotel Biltmore here. The convention, which extends through Sunday evening, will consider United States policy in the Middle East as well as major problems in American Jewish communal life.
President Eisenhower, in a message to the convention, made public today, said: “I am glad to know that this occasion will mark the centennial of the birth of the great Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis who, in 1918, helped found your organization. To Americans of varying creeds and political persuasions, Justice Brandeis was a champion of equality, liberty and fairness. I applaud your organization’s continuing effort to uphold these same values, an effort which I am confident will be fortified by your forthcoming convention.”
A two-day session of the Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress opened today with addresses by Reuven Shiloah, Minister Plenipotentiary of Israel in Washington, and Judge Justine Wise Polier. The latter urged the U.S. Government to “assume vigorous leadership” in establishing a permanent peace between Israel and the Arab states. She also asked for immediate action requesting the State Department to permit the sale of defensive weapons to Israel.
“We cannot excuse or justify the actions of those in our own State Department and other foreign offices who–through stupidity, bureaucracy, callousness or prejudice–closed the avenues of salvation to those who might have escaped the gas chambers of Hitler.” Judge Polier said. “It is tragic that some of those same bureaucrats who were thus responsible for the death of many of Hitler’s victims now are ready to sacrifice the remnants of those who escaped to Israel.”
Secretary of State Dulles’ statement denying defensive arms to Israel on the ground that it was a small country and could hardly hope to maintain military parity with its larger neighbors, Judge Polier said, “was not only a further invitation to aggression by the Arabs but also reflects an amoral if not immoral double standard of conduct.” She also pointed to Arab violations of the rights of American citizens, declaring that “it is all but incredible that our Government should agree to the discriminatory denial of visas, to the boycott against Jewish firms in commercial transactions and to the discriminatory exclusion of Jewish members of our Armed Forces by Arab officials.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
