Dorothy Thompson Voices Strong Anti-zionist Views at Council for Judaism Conference

“Zionist attempts to consider all Jews, in or out of Israel, as part of the Jewish people organization cannot possibly be acceptable to any non-Jew except an anti-Semite,” Dorothy Thompson, American publicist, declared here last night addressing the annual conference of the American Council for Judaism.

After stating that Zionist interpretation of “Jewish nationhood” had created problems for American and other Jews, Miss Thompson went on to say that the state of Israel and its relations with the Arab countries “is contributing to an international problem in which Americans as a whole are concerned.” She asserted that peace between the Arab states and Israel was possible “only if the U.S. ceases to treat one state in the Middle East as its particular protection and pet, and adopts more detachment and equality of treatment, and until the displaced Arabs are properly compensated for their losses.”

charging that discrimination was practiced against the Arab minority population in Israel, Miss Thomson said: “Despite all the claims of the Zionists, the minuscle Arab population, who represent not more than 15 percent of the original indigenous Arab inhabitants, live as second-rate citizens, with serious restrictions on their rights. The fact that Arabs can sit in the Knesset does not give them equal rights as citizens with Jews. And it is these statutes which are responsible for a flow of Arab refugees from Palestine that has never stopped to this day.”

(In New York, Charles H. Silver, president of the Amun-Israeli Housing Corporation, issued a statement defending the right of American Jews to sell Israeli bonds in the United States. The statement was in answer to an allegation made Friday by Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, at the convention in Chicago, that American Jews were being “pressured” to sell Israeli bonds.)