Anti-israel Ad Disavowed by Groups Whose Names Were in It

Officials representing six relief agencies providing aid to victims of the fighting in Lebanon have denied that their organizations consented to have their names listed in a full-page advertisement which appeared in several leading newspapers and which was critical of Israel for its actions in Lebanon.

The officials, representing CARE, the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, the Church World Service, the American Red Cross, the American Friends Service Committee, and Save the Children Federation; said in a letter to the editor in The New York Times today that they were also “dismayed” by the advertisements associating the names of their agencies with criticism of Israel in the ongoing Lebanon conflict.

“Preserving the neutrality of a non-governmental humanitarian agency is a difficult job in the best of times,” the officials wrote. “Without our impartial status, agencies such as ours would not be able to perform the public mission entrusted to us: delivering emergency disaster aid and reconstruction assistance wherever it is needed, to whoever needs it.”

The full-page advertisement was placed by an organization calling itself “Concerned Americans for Peace,” and listed as its address a post office box in Los Angeles. According to reports, the post office box was not rented to any group by this name.

ELEMENTS IN THE AD

The advertisement declared in bold letters, “The People of Lebanon Innocent — Victims of a Senseless War” and appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.

The advertisement listed the total number of wounded and killed in Lebanon at over 400,000 and the number of homeless at over 700,000. Calling the Israeli incursion an “insensitive” attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization, the advertisement said “no cause could be so righteous as to dictate the destruction and devastation of an innocent people and their country.” The advertisement urged concerned Americans to write their Congressional representatives “in an effort to spur immediate action aimed at stopping this merciless killing.”

While the officials said that the organization which claimed to place the advertisement had the right to express its opinion about the situation in Lebanon, the officials wrote; “They probably did not realize that they could actually harm our ability to help innocent victims of this conflict by calling into question our independent stance.”

“Yet this is exactly the case, which is why we must respectively decline any association with their views,” the letter said. “We deplore violence, but we are not taking sides in the political dispute.”

The full page advertisement, which in The New York Times cost $24,000, was reportedly placed by the Los Angeles office of the Bernard Hodes agency. Later reports indicated that the Hodes agency was placing the advertisement at the request of another agency, Copely, Lane Capen in Los Angeles. This could not be confirmed.

The Los Angeles Times said, according to reports, that the advertisement had come from the Hodes agency with authorization to use the names of the organizations. But the newspaper said that it later decided to exclude the names of the relief organizations because it was unable to confirm their authorization.

Representatives of The New York Times said “opinion ads are given wide latitude. They are acceptable so long as they list the sponsor’s name and address.” The Times said its policy usually calls for an investigation of the sponsors’ authenticity “unless it was placed through an agency as was the case here.”

ADL CITES ADVERTISING ‘SCAM’

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said in a letter to five newspapers which ran the advertisement that they “had fallen prey to an advertising scam.” ADL national director Nathan Perlmutter said it was “disturbing” that the newspapers had failed to check the authorization for publishing the names and called upon them to independently check the information and give their readers the facts concerning the advertisement.

Regarding the casualty and homeless figures which the adlisted, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Jewish Community Relation Council of New York, said the advertisement is “part of an ongoing campaign in the past few weeks we’ve seen manifested throughout the media destorting facts about the Lebanon situation.”