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Congressmen Ask Nixon to Clarify Position on Mideast Policy

December 24, 1969
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Rep. Bertram L. Podell, New York Democrat told the House of Representatives today that he had asked President Nixon whether should regard expressions by Secretary of State Rogers “or your own words as the official guideline to our Middle East policy.” Mr. Podell quoted at length from Mr. Nixon’s commitments on Israel and asked the President to advise Congress if he had changed his mind. He said the notion was spreading that “our government is willing to use its great influence on Israel to force a withdrawal similar to the 1957 rollback.”

Rep. Joshua Eilberg, Pennsylvania Democrat, said that he had asked Sen. Hugh Scott, the Republican Minority leader, to use his “enormous prestige to convince President Nixon to provide support for Israel.”

Re. Eilberg said he had told the Pennsylvania senator that he was concerned that the Nixon Administration “may so badly erode Israel’s position at the conference table and on the battlefield that once again her security will be seriously compromised.”

(In New York, Jacob Stein, president of the United Synagogue of America, called for an emergency conference of all major American Jewish organizations to deal with the latest developments in American policy towards Israel and the Middle East. The proposal was made in a message to Dr. William Wexler, newly elected president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

In Montevideo, the Zionist Organization of Uruguay endorsed proposals for convocation of an urgent meeting of world Jewish leaders in Israel to consider the country’s present situation and express their solidarity with the Jewish State.)

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