The State Department’s policy of shipping arms to the Arab states was sharply criticized here tonight by Dr. Carl Hermann Voss, chairman of the executive council of the American Christian Palestine Committee, and by Dr. David W. Petegorsky, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, at a celebration marking Israel’s sixth anniversary of independence. The meeting was arranged by the American Jewish Congress.
Christians and Jews alike, Dr. Voss said, “should lock arms in creating a solid phalanx of strong support for the new Israel so that all its enemies may be routed. We who are truly friends of democracy in Israel and the Arab lands, ” he concluded, “must not ‘lend comfort and aid’ to these enemies. “
Dr. Petegorsky charged that the recent decision to ship American arms to Iraq “is certain to exacerbate rather than ease” the tense situation in the Middle East. “The Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Byroade, the Jewish consultant to the Republican National Committee and other Administration spokesmen have offered assurances that these arms will not be used against Israel, ” he said. “In the face of Iraq’s unblemished record of implacable hostility to Israel, its refusal to sign an armistice and it’s leadership in the Arab blockade and boycott of Israel, one would have to be very naive indeed to rest Israel’s security and Middle Eastern peace on such assurances.”
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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.
