An Illinois Congressman, Philip M. Crane, Republican, told a Zionist Organization of America meeting last night, “the fact that Israel has seen the U.S. let it down in the past with regard to ‘guarantees’ must carefully be weighed in assessing the current Israeli hesitancy to participate in a withdrawal with nothing but guarantees in return.” Crane added in his address to the nearly 1000 leaders and members of the ZOA from the New York Metropolitan area attending the ZOA public “support-Israel” meeting that, “the U.S., we must remember, pressed Israel to give up the Sinal in 1957, following the Suez crisis. Now, nearly four years after the 1967 conflict, many in this country are busy persuading Israel to do it once again. The Israelis, however, have not forgotten the result of their previous acquiescence to this pressure.” Noting the situation of Soviet Jewry, Crane, who is president of the Public Affairs Education Fund in Washington, D.C., and a member of the House Banking and Currency Committed, declared: “Soviet hostility to Israel is matched at home by a campaign of repression against Soviet citizens of the Jewish faith that can only be described as a policy of cultural and spiritual genocide.” Commenting on Soviet Jewry, Herman L. Weisman, president of the ZOA, said, “We demand not only the release of those whom the Soviets are now placing on trial but the abandonment of those scapegoating trials. We call for the ultimate freedom of all who in the Soviet Union wish to leave and emigrate to Israel.” Weisman declared that world peace depends upon maintaining the stand, “No surrender to Soviet imperialism.”
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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.
