Dulles Criticized in Senate for Accepting Arab Stand on U.S. Jews

Sen. Herbert H. Lehman said today in a Senate speech that if the Administration does not terminate compliance with Saudi Arabian discrimination against American Jews he would ask the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pursue the matter. He referred to contractual forms entered in connection with a U.S. air bass in Saudi Arabia “under which the U.S. Government undertakes to see to it that no American soldier of the Jewish faith should serve in Saudi Arabia.”

Sen. Lehman said: “Our airbase in Saudi Arabia may be an important one, but I doubt whether it is as important as the maintenance of the integrity of the United States. “He called on the State Department to disavow anti Jewish discrimination by renegotiating contractual arrangements with Saudi Arabia to eliminate discrimination against Americans “insofar as assignments to duty are concerned or in any other way.”

“I cannot understand the Government of the United States officially subscribing to this prejudice and honoring it,” he said, pointing out that the government also tolerated Saudi Arabian discrimination against American businessmen. “It is a fact,” he stated, “that before any article produced in America can be imported into Saudi Arabia on a commercial basis, the supplier of these goods has to certify that his firm is not a ‘Jewish’ firm.”

Recalling that the Republican Administration of William Howard Taft in 1913 cancelled a Russian-American friendship treaty when the Czarist regime discriminated against U.S. Jews, Sen. Lehman questioned Secretary Dulles’ attitude toward such discrimination today. He also questioned basic American policy in the Near East. “To Mr. Dulles there is nothing reprehensible about supplying arms to a feudal autocracy like Saudi Arabia which is bent on the destruction of the free Republic of Israel. To me this shows, on Mr. Dulles’ part, a kind of moral blindness,” he stated.