President Carters supporters intensified efforts today to win back Jewish supporters in the wake of the United States vote in the United Nations Security Council March 1 for a resolution condemning Israeli settlements and Carter’s subsequent repudiation of the vote.
With the New York Primary only 15 days away, Robert Strauss, Carter’s campaign manager, and Sal Linowitz, the President’s special envoy for Mideast negotiations, met with Jewish leaders at a Manhattan club today at a session in which reporters were barred. In addition, a group of New York leaders, Jews and non Jews, is scheduled to go to Washington tomorrow to meet personally with the President at the White House.
The meeting today at the Harmonie Club, which was organized last Friday, drew a great deal of interest in the Jewish community. Those invited included supporters of the President as well as those who have not indicated their position in the Presidential race.
One source noted that several leading Jews, who were not invited, have been seeking invitations. At the same time, according to sources, others talked of boycotting today’s meeting. Several rabbis as well as the Jewish Defense League, planned demonstrations outside the meeting site.
A spokesman for the Carter-Mondale Campaign Headquarters here said the press was not being allowed into the meeting because it was being considered as “an off-the-record discussion.”
Meanwhile, the feeling in some Jewish quarters about Carter’s Mideast policy was demonstrated during the visit of Secretary of transportation Neil Goldschmidt to New York yesterday and today. At a meeting of the Greater New York Committee of Religious Zionists of America last night, members of the audience booed and asked tough questions of Goldschmidt about the President’s actions on the UN vote. Goldschmidt was also questioned about the Mideast when he spoke today at a Leadership Conference on Energy Conservation, co-sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the Jewish Community nations Council.
A source told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had never seen feelings run so high in the Jewish community.
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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.
