Goldmann Hails U.S. Decision to Review Middle East Policy

The Eisenhower Administration’s present review of its policy in the Middle East was welcomed as “urgent and long overdue,” by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the Jewish Agency, in an address here today. The Zionist leader expressed his hope that “this review will result in a policy contributing towards peace and stability in the Middle East,” and pointed out that the “present policy, however well intentioned, far from stabilizing conditions, added to disorientation.”

Dr. Goldmann addressed a seven-state regional conference of the American Zionist Council which speaks for all Zionist bodies in this country. His remarks were the first made by any Zionist leader on a message from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivered to the Weizmann Dinner in New York last Thursday by U.S. Solicitor General Simon E. Sobeloff.

Mr. Sobeloff had told the New York Assembly that “in accordance with the desires of the President, Secretary Dulles is actively engaged in the evaluation of our efforts in the Near East with the purpose of hastening progress towards these policy objectives.” Dr. Goldmann pointed out that “this type of review was precisely what American friends of Israel have been demanding for many months.”

“Concerned with the fate of American objectives in the Middle East and the security of the new State of Israel, we felt that American policy in recent months had been vacillating and inclined to convey the impression of predisposition toward one party in the area at the expense of the other party.” Dr. Goldmann said.

“Mr. Sobeloff’s statement on behalf of the Administration that we will not seek to increase our friendship with the Arabs at the expense of Israel any more than we would seek to gain favor with Israel at the expense of the Arabs, if fulfilled, would meet our request for an equitable policy,” Dr. Goldmann continued. “Application is the only test of the validity of pledges and principles.

“We are not only awaiting clarification of this policy, but also its immediate application. Concentration on raising the economic standards of all countries in the Middle East and intense efforts toward restoring peace between Israel and the Arab states are prerequisites for securing that region of the globe for the free world,” the Jewish Agency chairman declared.

ZIONIST COUNCIL ALERTED TO ANTI-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA IN U.S.

More than 500 Jewish leaders attended the all-day Eastern Seaboard regional conference, at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. The American Zionist Council called the conference to alert its members to the growth of anti-Israel propaganda in the United States. The meeting also took up the Zionist role in Jewish education, the part to be played by American Jewish youth, and other activities of the organization.

Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the AZC, addressing today’s conference, said: “The so-called U.S. policy of ‘impartial friendship’ in the Middle East is a failure. You just cannot be impartial between those who want peace and those who insist on perpetuating a war psychosis. And to propose, as our government has done, to supply arms to the Arab states is to reject not only logic and reason but the very core of American tradition of support for law against disorder.”

Rabbi Mordecai Kirshblum, president of the Mizrachi Organization of America, charged that the Arab leaders have made the Arab refugees who fled from Israel “hostages and weapons in their unremitting campaign of hostility against the Jewish State.” This conclusion is reinforced, he asserted, by the recent action of the Jordanian authorities in warning any Arab refugee who claimed the funds unblocked by Israel that he would be considered a “traitor” to the Arab cause.