Guarantees for Jews Remaining in Algeria Considered Insufficient

The reported guarantees for Jews remaining in an independent Algeria will not solve all the problems they will face, R.N. Carvalhe, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, declared here tonight.

Speaking at a meeting of the group’s council, he said the guarantees, which are understood to have been negotiated by Algerian rebel leaders with France, would be “an invaluable step,” in that they would enable Jews wishing to leave Algeria to go to France on the same terms as non-Jewish Frenchmen.

He added, however, that the agreement “will not enable the Algerian Jews to realize their assets or make it any easier for those who want to remain to live in a Moslem state, particularly in one where the local population has been driven to “hatred of French and Europeans.”

He also urged that the French settlers were not likely to accept the terms of the agreement peaceably and that in many places, Algerian Jews had identified themselves with the extremists of the CAS, the European underground which violently opposes an independent Algeria. The Jewish community, he said, “cannot avoid the troubles which lie ahead. Whichever side the Jews identify themselves with, they are bound to be involved in conflict.”

Discussing the situation of Soviet Jewry, the Anglo-Jewish leader said there was nothing new to say about Russia except to “express our indignation and horror at what appears to be a recrudescence of some of the worst anti-Semitism of the Stalin era” on an official governmental basis.

He said it was “almost impossible to understand” why the Soviet Government had adopted this attitude toward “a relatively insignificant minority.” He asked, “What if Russian Jews do establish contact with Jews abroad? What even if some of them decide they wish to live in Israel? What harm can this do to the monolithic Communist regime? Other smaller, weaker and more precarious Communist states have managed to withstand such batterings.”