The State Department was today sharply criticized here for the views on the Arab-Israel problem expressed last night by Assistant Secretary of State Henry A. Byroade in his address to the annual conference of the American Council for Judaism in Philadelphia.
A spokesman for the Israel Foreign Office charged that the views advanced by Mr. Byroade constitute a further step on the part of the State Department to render remote the prospects of peace in the Middle East.
Sec. Byroade’s second speech on Israel and the Middle East within the past few weeks is unlikely to be more favorably received in Israel than his earlier one, the spokesman noted. He added that Sec. Byroade’s welcome admonition to the Arabs to accept Israel as a fact and to make peace is largely negated by his exhortations to Israel to accept what is contrary to her very essence.
From the standpoint of American-Israel friendship, Sec. Byroade’s choice of a platform could not have been more unfortunate, the spokesman stressed. It is, he continued, as if a responsible spokesman of the Israel Foreign Office chose for an address on the subject of Israel’s attitude toward the United States an Israeli audience notoriously hostile to that country, for example the Communists who, he asserted, by their relative insignificance compare well with the Council for Judaism. In fairness to the Israeli Communists, however, one might add that they never questioned the right of the United States to exist while the Council for Judaism has always violently opposed the establishment of the Jewish State, he pointed out.
The Israeli spokesman insisted that Sec. Byroade should have known better than to put forward the singular idea that Israel should lay down in advance an arbitrary limitation upon immigration which is inadmissible at any time. Israel’s rise was due to a relentless and successful struggle against the attempt to impose such a limitation from the outside.
The policy of keeping Israel’s gates open to receive any Jew needing a home is in the historic sense the “raison d’etre” of Israel’s existence, the Israeli spokesman went on. Limitation by Israel of its own accord of the discharge of this sacred task is inconceivable.
The State Department’s acceptance of this fantastic claim by the Arab League as reasonable, can only strengthen Arab intransigeant opposition to peace. It can by no means move Israel to abandon the principle enshrined in its legislation, the importance of which can be judged by the fact that it is expressed in the first of the Constitutional laws enacted by Parliament.
Commenting on Sec. Byroade’s suggestion that Israel pay reparations to the Arab refugees, the Israeli spokesman referred to the fact that Israel had actually expressed its readiness to contribute a “global sum” to a fund for the reintegration of the refugees – and that Israel had made this point clear in a White Paper.
Commenting further on Sec. Byroade’s statement that Israel has aroused the suspicion among her neighbors that it must be “total peace or nothing” and on his suggestion for step-by-step moves leading to peace, the Israeli Foreign Ministry official declared that this would only perpetuate the present ineffectual armistice regime and that it would not encourage progress toward an overall solution.
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