The Soviet Union would demonstrate its desire to cooperate in achieving stability in the Middle East by withdrawing Soviet military personnel from Syria and joining in a proposal to forbid the passage of warships of all great powers through the Suez Canal, Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D. Wash.) said last night. Speaking to some 500 persons attending a B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League dinner honoring its associate director and general counsel, Arnold Forster, on his 35th anniversary with the ADL, Jackson declared: “At this very moment there are over 2000 Soviet military personnel in Syria, 500 of them operating a dense network of surface-to-air missiles. Soviet diplomats have been urging Syria to continue its military operations and cultivating distrust of American diplomatic efforts aimed at a partial settlement.”
The Senator observed that if Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who met with Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger earlier this week in Geneva, “wishes to demonstrate that his government will cooperate in bringing about a disengagement, he might well begin by disengaging the Russian army and air force from Israel’s northern border.” Jackson’s speech followed a huge May Day demonstration in Damascus where an estimated 200,000 Syrians derided Kissinger as a “cheap American” and a “Jewish conspirator,” for his efforts to achieve a Syrian-Israeli disengagement on the Golan Heights.
“For the long term,” Jackson said in urging demilitarization of the Suez, “the shift of Soviet activity to Iraq, Syria, Aden, South Yemen and Somalia, combined with the reopening of the Suez Canal, poses a great and growing threat to Western interests in the Persian Gulf.”
Jackson also warned that the United States is in a position of dependence on foreign oil for as much as one-third of its oil needs and observed that “drifting into greater dependence on Arab oil could be disastrous.” He urged establishment of a “real strategic reserve, capable of replacing imports for an extensive period in the event of supply interruptions” and in this connection advocated a three-point national energy policy for development of energy sources; a massive research and development program or alternate energy sources, and renewed conservation efforts.
Forster, who began with the ADL as a volunteer in the mid-1930s, appointed the ADL’s general counsel in 1946 and named associate director in 1962, received messages of tribute from American and Israeli officials, and a host of public figures. Among the dignitaries on the dais were Israeli Ambassador to the UN Yosef Tekoah, and Ambassador David Rivlin, Israeli Consul General in New York.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
