King Faisal, of Saudi Arabia, who delivered anti-Jewish remarks in Washington last week, and was, as a result, snubbed by New York’s Mayor Lindsay and Gov. Rockefeller, made an effort yesterday to “clarify” his attitude.
In a statement for the Arab press, broadcast to Saudi Arabia through the facilities of the Voice of America, which is owned and operated by the United States Government, he said: “We are not against the religion of the Jews, but against the Zionists and the Jews who help the Zionists.”
A spokesman for the king also quoted the monarch as counseling the acceptance of those Jews who had made their home in Palestine long before it became the independent nation of Israel in 1948. “Those Jews who were in Palestine have a right to stay there, but the Jews who came from outside are intruders,” the king was reported to have asserted.
The spokesman then added that Islam had always regarded itself as “a continuation of Judaism and Christianity, ” but he did not make it clear if the king had made this point, or if he considered this as further evidence that no attack on the Jews as a whole had been intended.
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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.
