Former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Democratic nominee for the United States Senate from New York, said today that, if elected, he would work vigorously for continued large-scale United States aid to Israel, for advising the President to sever aid to any Arab state that threatens anti-Israel aggression, and for further progress in the joint U.S. -Israel efforts toward desalination of sea water. He also advocated speedy Congressional liberalization of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, to eliminate the national origins quota system.
Mr. Kennedy made these statements, among others, at a special news conference for the Jewish press at which he took issue with the attacks made against him by the Republican incumbent in the Senate from New York State, Sen. Kenneth B. Keating, in connection with the Government’s decision to sell a large former German firm to a Swiss concern. Mr. Keating, seeking re-election, had alleged that, under that transaction, the U.S.A. would turn over many millions of dollars to “Nazis.”
Mr. Kennedy was very bitter about the attacks leveled against him by Sen. Keating in connection with the sale of Interhandel, a Swiss firm, of the assets seized by the Government during the war from I.G. Farben, a large German cartel. That property was taken as enemy assets in 1942. He said Sen. Keating, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supervising the activities of the Department of Justice, knew about every phase of the Interhandel transaction. “He himself, ” Mr. Kennedy stated, referring to Sen. Keating, “made a speech on the floor of the Senate in March of 1963, declaring that none of that money would go to the Nazis.”
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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.
