The American Jewish Congress today criticized Administration proposals which would make “the exercise of the right to a passport” dependent upon the “largesse” of the Secretary of State and questioned State Department restrictions on travel to Israel after the Sinai war.
Testifying today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sanford H. Bolz, Washington counsel of the American Jewish Congress, expressed disapproval of the Administration’s efforts to make passports an accessory of foreign relations.
In the statement submitted by Mr. Bolz, criticism was aimed at the State Department for denying passports for travel to Israel in 1957 “long past the time when disorder had ceased.” He said this ban on passports to Israel was allowed to operate “as a form of economic sanction or pressure upon Israel sorely in need of the springtime Passover and Easter tourist traffic.”
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