Speedy ratification of the U.N. Genocide Convention by the Senate was urged here today by Mrs. Irving M. Engel, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, testifying before a Senate Foreign Relations Sub-committee in behalf of the organization’s 86,000 members.
A detailed rebuttal of the American Bar Association’s arguments against the ratification of the Genocide Convention was presented to the Subcommittee by two representatives of the American Jewish Congress, Rabbi Joachim Prinz and Shad Polier.
Mr. Polier disputed the Bar Association’s contention that ratification of the genocide pact would work a radical and unconstitutional change in the relation of the states and the Federal Government. He also denied the Bar Association’s charge that the Convention provision which makes punishable direct and public incitement to commit genocide constitutes an infringement of the Constitutional guarantee of free speech. He attached the argument that the convention could permit an international agency to meddle in such domestic problems as racial segregation and lynching.
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