Two Republican Congressmen led off a sharp attack on the Administration today because of United States support for the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its attack on terrorist bases inside Jordan. The debate in Congress proceeded as Jewish organizations protested what they called the one-sided UN action.
Rep. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in the House today that the UN resolution was “both an unfair slap at Israel and a setback for peace generally in the Middle East.” He warned that the UN resolution would give Arab terrorists “moral support to continue to destroy life and property inside Israel” and represented “a diplomatic victory in the Middle East arena for the Soviet Union.” He said that “too often in the past, the United States has fallen back to a stance of neutrality in the Mideast, a non-position that has helped the Soviet Union make inroads. Now is the time for realism before it is too late.”
Rep. Seymour Halpern of New York told the House that the Administration’s support of the resolution censuring Israel “made a mockery of all the pious talk about the necessity of displaying firmness and willpower to deter terrorism and aggression in Vietnam.” He said the resolution gave the terrorists “a sort of privileged sanctuary from which they can sally forth and spread havoc into Israel.” He accused the Administration of “a lack of will power and resolve” in going along on the resolution and noted that “Israel has certainly as much right to defend her territory against guerrilla terrorism as we have to defend South Vietnam.”
RABIN SAYS ISRAEL WILL NOT TAKE DICTATION FROM JORDAN OR TERRORISTS
Israel Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin, the former Chief of Staff, referred to the Security Council resolution and statements made in the Council debate, when he addressed the Rabbinical Assembly last night at Kiamesha Lake. He warned Jordan that neither it nor the terrorists it is harboring “will dictate to us how to react or in what proportion.” He commented that while “today we are talking about Jordan, the same holds true for any of our neighbors who fail to maintain the cease-fire resolution of the Security Council.”
The triennial convention of B’nai B’rith Women adopted a resolution deploring the Security Council resolution that condemned Israel in a manner that “unfairly gave way to the Soviet-Arab bloc.” The resolution “pointed out that the Council had denounced Israel without condemning in sharper terms the “wanton killing by Arab terrorists which provoked the Israeli retaliation.”
(In Long Beach, N.Y., the national convention of the United Zionists Revisionists of America adopted a resolution criticizing the United States for supporting the Security Council resolution condemning Israel. The Zionist group said the United States had played into the hands of the Soviet Union and it warned that the Council resolution would deprive Israel of its legitimate right of self-defence and would embolden the Arabs to escalate their terrorist activities.
(In Paris, Andre Francois-Poncet, a prominent French diplomat and former Ambassador to Germany, denounced the Security Council’s resolution. Writing in the newspaper, Le Figaro, Mr. Poncet said “we may wonder if good sense has disappeared and if we are not living in the wrong world.”)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
