Church; Support for Israel is Not a Sentimental Matter but in America’s National Interest

Sen. Frank Church (D.Idaho) told a group of some 150 Jewish leaders in Scarsdale why he supports military and economic aid to Israel but not to South Vietnam. Church said the war in Vietnam is a civil war between two despotisms while Israel is a democratic country determined to defend itself against enemies who have said they want to annihilate her. In addition, Vietnam requires American troops while Israel has never asked for soldiers from the United States, he said.

Church, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke yesterday at a fund-raising meeting of the United Jewish Appeal in Westchester County. He noted that this was the first time he had been asked to address a meeting raising funds for Israel. Church declared that most of all Southeast Asia did not involve any economic or strategic importance for the United States which the Middle East was the crossroads of the world, He said support for Israel “is not a sentimental matter…it is beyond this a matter of our own national interest.”

“If we were ever to see the day that the Syrian and Egyptian forces, armed by the Russians, were to roll over Israel that day would bring the Soviet Union to an unprecedented position of influence and control in the Middle East,” Church said. “I cannot imagine any situation so fraught with peril to the United States and its allies.”

On the question of Soviet Jewry, Church said that after visiting the Babi Yar memorial in Kiev and seeing no mention of the fact that most of the victims of the Nazi massacre were Jews, he could understand why Soviet Jews want to leave the USSR for Israel.

Church noted that if the United States could break the stranglehold on oil by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), then it would not have to sell arms to Middle East countries to make up the American balance of payments deficit.