B’nai B’rith Urges ‘selective Control’ of Exports of Arab Boycotting States

B’nai B’rith’s Board of Governors has proposed that the Administration consider “selective control” of exports to nations that engage in or cooperate with the Arab oil embargo. The Board, in the concluding session yesterday of its annual meeting here, said an American policy of “economic self-defense” against the oil boycott might properly deny “goods, materials, tourism and technology” needed by the boycotting nations.

In another action, the Board, which had earlier cancelled London as the site of its 1974 triennial convention, voted to shift the mass assembly to Israel “as an expression of confidence in and solidarity with the people of Israel.” The B’nai B’rith leaders rejected London because of resentment in the Jewish community over Great Britain’s pro-Arab stand during the Yom Kippur War.

The Board also adopted a $21.2 million budget for the organization’s national and international programs in 1974, a jump of 7.2 percent over this year’s budget. Of the total, $9.4 million–a 7.5 percent increase–was allocated for B’nai B’rith’s youth programs.

In its resolution on the oil embargo, the Board noted that the action of the Arab states violated a 1970 UN resolution which forbids “economic measures” by any nation as a means of coercing another state “in order to obtain from it advantages of any-kinds.” In another resolution, the B’nai B’rith leaders reaffirmed their “unequivocal support” for Congressional measures linking trade concessions and credit guarantees to the Soviet Union with the loosening of its emigration. restrictions.

The Board also condemned Syria and Egypt for “brutal disregard of every principle of civilized human conduct” in their treatment of captured Israeli soldiers and airmen. Israel’s reports that some of its captured soldiers were murdered should be investigated by the United Nations, the Board said, and that “international sanctions” should be instituted if government complicity in the killings is shown.