Gop Official to Push for Strong Pro-israel, Soviet Jewry Emigration Planks at Party’s National Concl

The head of the Republican Party’s national committee of state chairmen and himself New York State GOP chairman pledged this weekend to introduce a strong pro-Israel plank in the Republican Party platform at its national convention in August. Former Judge Richard Rosenbaum, a close friend of Vice-President Nelson A. Rockefeller, also said he would sponsor a plank calling for the freedom of emigration of Soviet Jewry.

Rosenbaum, in an interview this weekend on nationally syndicated newspaper columnist Victor Riesel’s WEVD “Talk of New York” program, said that he had spoken with Iowa Governor Robert Ray, chairman of the Republican Platform Committee and that the latter had agreed to permit a resolution drafted by Rosenbaum which “guarantees the integrity, the existence, the strength, and the security of the State of Israel.”

“In addition to that,” Rosenbaum told Riesel, “I intend to sponsor a plank which will call for freedom of emigration from the Soviet Union for Soviet Jewry and all peoples for that matter to freely emigrate from whatever nations they are living in. I will emphasize, especially, the right of the so-called ‘Prisoners of Conscience’ who are living in Russia to be able to go to Israel. I think that’s extremely important and I want the Republican Party to stand four square behind those kinds of resolutions.”

Rosenbaum said he had already received support for these proposed resolutions from a group of northeastern Republican chairmen. He said that he would go to the platform committee in Kansas on August 10 after having campaigned for his proposals among the Republican delegations and that he anticipated unanimous endorsement.

Rosenbaum said that Rockefeller would be an at-large delegate from New York State to the Republican national convention and was “sympathetic to Israel and there is no doubt that he supports the integrity and strength and existence of the State of Israel.”