Disclose Simon Signed Statement on Behalf of U.S. Which Concealed Anti-jewish Bias by Saudi Gov’t.

The American Jewish Congress has called on Treasury Secretary William E. Simon to repudiate a statement which he signed on behalf of the United States which, according to the AJ Congress, endorses by “euphemistic concealment” the anti-Jewish discrimination practiced by the government of Saudi Arabia. A spokesman for the AJ Congress told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the statement was adopted last June 8 by the joint U.S.-Saudi Arabian Commission but remained “unpublicized” until now. The statement was released to the AJ Congress by what the spokesman described as a highly reliable source.

In a letter to Simon, AJ Congress President Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg cited the statement relating to manpower training in Saudi Arabia by American experts in collaboration with Saudian counterparts which stipulates that the programs “would be sensitive to the social, political and religious contexts of Saudi Arabia.”

This requirement, Rabbi Hertzberg stated, represented an “implicit understanding that the Saudi Arabian government will not be obliged to deal with, accept or recognize American citizens whom it finds objectionable on any of these grounds. The provision then, would seem to be no more than euphemistic concealment of an agreement to accommodate the religious bias of the Saudi Arabian government and, more precisely, to exclude qualified Jews from participation in these projects.”

CONCRETE EXAMPLE CITED

As a concrete example, Rabbi Hertzberg’s letter noted that Saudi Arabia will need some 6000 physicians by 1980 to staff two new hospitals in Jidda and Riyadh, and that two American firms–the Whittaker Corp. of California and the Hospital Corporation of America-had contracted to operate the new facilities and would presumably recruit additional physicians in the U.S.

“We have no doubt that none of the 2000 doctors already on the staff of the King Faisal Hospital is Jewish and that none of the 6000 doctors whom the Saudi Arabians now intend to recruit will be Jewish,” Rabbi Hertzberg wrote, “We are certain that all Jewish candidates will be excluded because of the ‘religious contexts in Saudi Arabia.’ We submit that U.S. collaboration in promoting any program thus permeated with religious bigotry is incompatible with fundamental American tenets and traditions and inadmissible on the part of any government agency,” Rabbi Hertzberg wrote.

He suggested that American members of the Joint Commission make clear to the Saudi Arabian government “that the United States will not participate in joint efforts in which the rights of any of our citizens are compromised or reduced because of Saudi Arabian demands.”

Rabbi Hertzberg urged that “instead of a unilateral guarantee that all programs of the joint U.S. -Saudi Arabian Commission shall be ‘sensitive to the social, cultural, political and religious contexts of Saudi Arabia,’ our country’s representatives must insist upon a corresponding and commensurate requirement that these programs be equally responsible to the traditions and practices of our country.”