A Cabinet colleague sharply rebuked Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir today for his remarks last week blasting the recent American Jewish Congress mission to Cairo and Amman and his attack on World Jewish Congress president Edgar Bronfman for going to Moscow for talks with Soviet officials on Jewish emigration rights.
Yosef Burg, Minister of Religious Affairs, veteran leader of the National Religious Party and the most senior minister in the unity coalition Cabinet, told this re- porter he was “astounded by Shamir’s criticism and even more astounded that he chose to make it public.”
Noting that neither the AJCongress group’s visits to Cairo and Amman earlier this month nor Bronfman’s trip to Moscow were undertaken behind the back of the Israel government, Burg declared, “If Shamir was against the missions, he could have aired his criticism in the Cabinet.”
Shamir, who is Deputy Premier and leader of Likud, indicated in an exclusive interview with this reporter last week that he thought the AJCongress group and Bronfman were trespassing on what he viewed as Israel’s primacy as negotiator and policy leader not only where its own national interests are concerned but as representative of “the Jewish people on Jewish problems.”
Shamir peppered his remarks with denigration of the AJCongress as a “peanut-size organization,” and personal disparagement of former AJCongress president Howard Squadron. (See separate stories for Squadron’s rejoinder and reaction from AJC leaders.) He rapped Bronfman for undertaking negotiations “on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people” for which he was “not authorized.”
“Why denigrate them in public?” Burg asked Wednesday.” At least he (Shamir) should have remembered that sometimes we need them.” He added that “There is certainly no moral or political value in a public attack made a posteriori and the personal denigration of Bronfman was just plain wrong.”
Sources close to Burg described Shamir’s attack as “typical Herut bluster.” It was recalled that the creation of the World Jewish Congress in 1936 occasioned a great sense of hope among Jews at a time of events that foreshadowed the Holocaust; that years later the WJC succeeded in opening channels in many countries inaccessible to both Israel and the World Zionist Organization, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
The AJCongress group, led by Harvard Prof. Henry Rosovsky, issued a statement here last week expressing confidence that Egypt and Jordan seek urgently to broaden the Middle East peace process. They based their conviction on their talks with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan on which they briefed Premier Shimon Peres.
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