Council for Judaism Seeks to Influence Democratic Party Convention

The American Council for Judaism today started a political campaign here to influence the Democratic Party convention against including in its platform any statement favorable to Israel.

In a memorandum submitted to the Platform Committee of the Democratic Party, which opened its meeting today at the Conrad Hilton ;Hotel, Clarence L. Coleman Jr., president of the American Council for Judaism, said he hoped the committee would not adopt “any form of specific resolution which might further encourage either the Arab states or Israel to believe any responsible political body of American life accepts as a working, practical or legal premise the Zionist definition of American Jews as people who, because of their faith, are invested by Israel with a separate nationality.”

“The State of Israel is a foreign state for us, ” Mr. Coleman asserted, “precisely as it is for Americans of all other faiths. We help–and wish to continue to help–our coreligionists in need in Israel, or anywhere else, but we insist that Israel is the homeland of only its own citizens. We do not possess–and do not wish to possess–any national rights or obligations in common with the citizens of Israel. In offering Israelis charitable assistance we distinguish between such philanthropy going from a group of private citizens in one country to a group of private citizens in another country, on the one hand, and any suggestion or implication that, as Americans, but because we are Jews, we owe any obligation to the Israeli State, on the other hand.”

If the committee should make mention of the Middle East, Mr. Coleman declared, “we of the Council hope any such mention will be predicated upon the most sober judgment of what is best for all the people of the United States and the free world; and that the exhortations of Zionist special-pleaders for Israeli national interests will be evaluated for exactly what they are and not as reflective of the attitude of Americans of Jewish faith who want no national or political relationship between themselves and the State of Israel that is different from the relationships of their fellow citizens of other faiths.”

There is, Mr. Coleman insisted, “no, ‘Jewish’ vote which can be controlled or delivered by any agency or institution of Jews. There is no organization existent in American life which could deliver such a vote, even if it existed. ” At the same time, he cited three ways in which the United States Government had allowed some of the Arab states and Israel to infringe upon the rights of American Jews because of their faith. These were:

1. Refusal by some Arab states to honor passports of American Jews for visa purposes although Americans of other faiths experience no such difficulty; 2. Proscription of United States military personnel of Jewish faith against serving on United States bases in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere; 3. U.S. State Department rulings “accepting Israeli legislation which discriminates among American citizens on the basis of religious faith, or which, without their volition, invest American Jews–and not Americans of other faiths–with certain Israeli national rights.”