The American Jewish Congress today blamed inaction by the world’s pilots, airline managements and Congress for the Arab terrorist hijacking and the death of an airline agent during an air getaway by “armed bandits” in Houston, Tex. The AJ Congress demanded that Lufthansa and other airline pilots and managements “announce immediately that they will no longer fly to any country that gives refuge to air terrorists or allows them or their cause to benefit from this use of blackmail.”
Howard M. Squadron, chairman of the AJ Congress national governing council, asserted: “We demand that the air terrorists be made to stand trial in Libya and that the Arab fanatics they released be returned by Libya to German custody and made accountable for the cowardly murders they perpetrated at Munich. If Libya fails to comply, it must be cut off at once from all air services.”
Of US government responsibility, Squadron said that the “failure of the US Congress during its last session to enact legislation that would have provided at least some elements of sanction against offending countries” makes “all who played a part in the resistance to this legislation bear a measure of culpability for each new incident of air terror.”
WILL ENCOURAGE FUTURE LAWLESS ACTS
Philip E. Hoffman, president of the American Jewish Committee, charged today that “the unconscionable speed” with which the West German government released three Arab terrorists “can only encourage future acts of international lawlessness by Arab terrorists.” He recommended that the US and the UN “treat in the sternest manner — including the imposition of economic sanctions–those people and those nations who cooperate with and harbor hijackers, murderers and other international criminals.”
Rabbi David Polish, president of the (Reform) Central Conference of American Rabbis, charged that “the West German government has extended an official invitation to terrorists all over the world to escalate their deadly work.” Furthermore, he declared, “By its precedent-making surrender (West Germany) has exposed all nations to global blackmail. In the process it has undermined confidence in its capacity to govern.”
In Washington, 14 members of the Jewish Defense League, picketed the West German Embassy to protest the release of three freed terrorists. The JDLers charged that the release of the terrorists in effect declared “open season” for new terrorist outrages and demanded that the West German government sever diplomatic relations with all Arab countries giving haven to freed terrorists and hijackers. In New York, Bert Zweibon, JDL national chairman, said Bonn’s “capitulation to the black-mail of the Arab terrorists makes the Bonn government an accomplice to the Munich massacre of Jews.”
Dr. Joseph P. Sternstein, chairman of the Zionist Organization of America’s Public Affairs Committee, said that by complying with the hijackers’ demands West Germany “stands branded in the eyes of world opinion as displaying a deplorable lack of responsibility in knuckling under to Arab terrorists and making a mockery of the martyrs of the Munich massacre.”
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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.
