The Democratic Party has received recommendations from national Jewish organizations and other spokesmen that would reaffirm and re-enforce the party’s platform of four years ago advocating continued American support for Israel and for the cause of Jews in the Soviet Union and Arab countries.
Representatives of the various organizations submitted their views yesterday to the 153-member Democratic Platform Committee headed by Gov. Wendell Anderson of Minnesota during the foreign affairs period of the Platform Committee hearings. The four-day hearings, held in the Senate caucus room at the Capitol, concluded today.
The Committee heard approximately 400 witnesses at regional meetings in Denver, Atlanta, Kansas City and Newport, R.I. prior to its “national” sessions here. Debate on the 1976 platform will take place here June 11-12-13. The actual drafting of the platform is in the hands of a 15-member panel headed by Gov. Michael S.K. Dukakis of Massachusetts. They will present it for ratification to the Democratic nominating convention which opens in New York July 12.
CONCERNS SPELLED OUT
One of the witnesses appearing yesterday was Jon Rotenberg, Washington representative of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. He told the Committee that there are over 140,000 requests for emigration permits from Soviet Jews that have not yet been acted upon or processed by the Soviet authorities. Among them, he said, are about 1000 families “constituting a hard core community of ‘refusniks’ some of whom applied to leave for Israel more than six years ago.”
In a statement submitted to the Democratic Platform Committee, W. Averell Harriman, chairman of the Democratic Advisory Council’s Foreign Affairs Task Force and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, said he feels “strongly” that the U.S. “should continue to use every effective influence we can for the continuation of Jewish emigration and to eliminate the harassment of those who seek to emigrate.”
Morris J. Amitay, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, recommended to the platform delegates that a Democratic Administration “in accordance with the national interests of the United States” provide “diplomatic support to Israel and sufficient military and economic assistance to enable her to deter aggression and move toward peace.” He noted that those views “are entirely consistent with the language contained in the 1972 (Democratic) platform and it remains applicable today.”
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