Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir will be asked during a U.S. visit next month to “move forward” toward a Middle East peace, President Bush told the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith on Tuesday.
Speaking to the group’s international leadership conference, Bush said he will ask Shamir to “move forward in some way toward the peace that everybody here really aspires for.”
Bush said he told Foreign Minister Moshe Arens on Monday that Israel is a “strategic ally and a lasting friend.”
Bush also discussed his unusual meeting at the White House on Monday with Rachamim Elazar, an Ethiopian Jew now living in Israel.”
Bush has been credited with playing a key role in arranging the “Operation Moses” secret flights to rescue Ethiopian Jews.
Tuesday’s meeting was the second in less than a week between Bush and a U.S. Jewish group. Last Thursday, he met with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in the first of a series of regular meetings.
Referring to ADL’s national director, who participated in Last week’s meeting, Bush said, “I told Abe Foxman here, ‘Well, we’re practically going steady.’ “
REGARD FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The Bus administration appears to have embarked on an open-door policy with Jewish groups. By contrast, the Conference of Presidents seldom met with President Reagan, though its leaders had frequent meetings with Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz.
Bush, who referred to the conference as the “organization of presidents,” said he looks for ward to similar dialogues in the future.
The ADL group, meeting in the Old Executive Office Building, also heard Tuesday from Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu.
Busch’s speech was largely devoted to his shared concern with ADL to protect the “sacred right of religious freedom.”
“There is no greater contribution that one organization can make to the nation,” Bush asserted. Religious freedom “can never be taken for granted,” he added, urging ADL to “zealously” continue its work.
The president noted that ADL’s annual report on anti-Semitic incidents in the United States reported an increase during 1988.
“We must condemn all attacks on the Jewish religion, the Jewish heritage, clearly, unequivocally and without exception,” he said. “This nation must stand for tolerance, pluralism and a healthy respect for the rights of all minorities.”
Bush pledged to use the “bully pulpit” of the White House to speak out “for what is just and what is right.”
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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.
