Dr. Petegorsky Charges U.S. Delegation Responsible for U.N. Failure on Palestine

The American delegation at the United Nations was tonight blamed for the “continuing uncertainty and tension of the Palestine issue and the failure to establish peace” by Dr. David Petegorsky, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, who Just returned from Paris.

“At the United Nations,” stated Dr. Petegorsky, “people talk so openly and freely of the manner in which members of the U.S. delegation are flouting the spirit and letter of President Truman’s directives in Israel, that a formal investigation by the President night well be in order.” Declaring that the vacillations and unpredictability of the American delegation are lending the greatest encouragement to the forces seeking to plunge Israel into chaos, he added that even the British Government would be forced to call off its undeclared war against Israel if President Truman’s stated policy “were forthrightly and positively pursued by the American delegation.”

Discussing other phases of current U.N. activities, Dr. Petegorsky declared: “It is unfortunate that the U.N. is obsessed by the problem of the Arab refugees, who are in fact the victims of unprovoked aggression by the Arab states — and is most unwilling to take adequate account of the plight of scores of thousands of Jews in Moslem lands, particularly Egypt and Iraq, the principal aggressors. While the General Assembly has been speaking loudly of ‘humanitarianism,’ it has taken no notice of the fact that Jewish citizens and residents of the Arab lands were being persecuted and discriminated against by governments which have undertaken, through the U.N., to protect human rights.”