Jewish Congress Calls for Re-appraisal of U.S. Middle East Policy

The national administrative committee of the American Jewish Congress closed its two-day mid-year conference today with resolutions calling for a fundamental re-appraisal of United States policy in the Middle East, for the Congress of the United States to adopt a code of fair procedures for its investigating committees, and with a recommendation that President Eisenhower call a conference of governors of all states directly affected by the Supreme Court ruling to consider effective methods of de-segregating their schools.

Current American policy in the Middle East was sharply criticized in a major statement adopted at the meeting as “ignoring basic realities in the situation. “The statement was particularly critical of recent major policy statements by Henry A. Byroade, Assistant Secretary of State, “as not helping Americans adequately or correctly to appraise the validity of our current Middle Eastern policy or to participate in the formulation of a sound policy in the interests of peace and stability.”

The statement charged that Mr. Byroade by categorically stating that there was no possibility of an early peace settlement between Israel and the Arab States “has further encouraged Arab intransigeance, for it represents as an immutable fact the very situation it must be the priority of our policy to transform.”

Commenting on suggestions that Israel renounce its open door policy of immigration in order to allay Arab fears, the statement asserted that “Israel’s program for the absorption of immigrants has never been related to territorial expansion but to the expansion of the absorptive capacity of its present area through industrialization and intensive agriculture. That capacity certainly has not been reached not will it conceivably be reached in the immediate future.”

The statement urged the United States to take the following steps to develop “a program more likely to contribute to the peace” of the Middle East: 1. The initiation of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab States; 2. The ending of Arab economic and commercial boycotts and blockades against Israel; 3. The launching of international projects for the fullest utilization of the resources of the region for the welfare of all peoples in the region.

Calling upon President Eisenhower to summon a conference of the governors of all states directly affected by the Supreme Court decision to deliberate the most effective methods of making the changes which the ruling has made mandatory, the AJC also urged that the full resources of the Federal Government, financial as well as technical, be made available to the states “to ease the problems of adjustment.”

The resolution urged, further, that the Federal Government and the Congress “act in the spirit of the Supreme Court decision by moving speedily toward the elimination of every form of segregation in all areas within their control and jurisdiction.”

The Dodd Report issued by the Special House Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations was assailed at the AJC conference as “a serious threat to freedom of scientific inquiry and to the processes by which we obtain and disseminate reliable knowledge about human behavior.”