Kennedy Calls for Support of Israel

Senator Edward M. Kennedy declared last night that the “full moral force of the United States must be exerted in public and private” to achieve the immediate release of all Israeli POWs, called for an end to the blockade of Bab el Mandeb straits by Egypt, and pledged that he and Congress will support and act swiftly on the Administration’s request for $2.2 billion in emergency assistance for Israel.

The Democratic legislator from Massachusetts received a standing ovation and frequent and prolonged applause as he addressed some 1000 persons attending the $500-a-plate annual Weizmann Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria held under the auspices of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science to benefit research at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.

The dinner honored Morris L. Levinson for his services to Israel. Levinson is a member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, United Jewish Appeal National Campaign Chairman, and chairman of the Board of Governors of the UJA of Greater New York. He is also the newly elected president of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute.

Kennedy asserted that the “American people have not yielded in the past to demands that they forsake the cause of Israel and I am convinced that neither the sword rattling of the Soviet Union nor the oil boycott of the Arab nations will alter that commitment.” He told the audience that the U.S. “must stand for immediate and direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab nations” and added that the major powers “must not impose that peace. As concerned governments, we can and should play a role in assisting those negotiations, in helping them reach, fruition.”

Kennedy, who was one of 67 Senators to introduce a resolution urging immediate resupply of arms to Israel, underscored that Israel must continue to have the means to defend herself, and declared: “We must not allow the legitimate desire to maintain a strategic detente with the Soviet Union, a goal in the interests of all mankind, from preventing us from recognizing the perils as well as the promise of detente.” He noted that the USSR continues to pour missiles and weapons into Egyptian and Syrian airfields and seaports.

MRS. MEIR, KATZIR DESCRIBE WAR, AFTERMATH

Praising the role of the Weizmann Institute in creating “the springs of a new spiritual and material life,” Kennedy and the audience as well as other speakers paid tribute to the role of the Weizmann Institute scientists, and faculty members who participated in the Yom Kippur War on the front and at home. He disclosed that four Weizmann Institute members were killed during the war: Meir. Ben-Ari, Yaakov Leshem, Yaakov London and Gad Reshef.

In a recorded statement from Jerusalem to the dinner, Israeli President Ephraim Katzir extolled the role of the Weizmann Institute and Israeli scientists and said, “All of us in Israel share the same hope for a future characterized by victories of peace rather than by war.” He stated that Israel, “at such sad cost, has repulsed the most brutal attack upon its existence as a State and people and center of Jewish life.”

Israeli Premier Golda Meir, in a cabled message from Israel, declared that “we, in Israel, and you, in the diaspora, form and always formed one indivisible entity.” She recalled “the horror and the agony of this war that was forced on us” and noted that Israel has paid a “dreadful price in human life.” Observing that despite the terrible ravages of war, life continues, Mrs. Meir stated: “Although thousands of our young men and women have been called into active service, although hundreds of mothers and wives are bereaved, although the drain on the economy is almost unbearable–and will certainly become even more severe in the weeks that lie ahead–we are still very much in business.”

Arthur B. Krim, member of the Weizmann Institute’s Board of Governors, Abraham Feinberg, Board of Governors chairman and chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Committee, and Levinson paid tribute to the founders of the Institute and extolled the support given to the Weizmann Institute by President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. A musical program was presented by the renowned Israeli violinist, Itzhak Perlman. The dinner was opened with a minute of silence to memorialize the casualties of the Yom Kippur War.