Mideast Without Israel Would Threaten U.S. Interests and Boost Soviet Influence

The danger of serious deterioration of American interests in the Middle East as Soviet Union influence expands throughout the area was presented today by Rabbi Jay Kaufman, executive vice-president of B’nai B’rith. Posing the hypothetical picture of a Middle East without the State of Israel, Rabbi Kaufman asserted that the United States could “not remain impassive if Israel were not on the scene at all. Our nation’s security would be greedy jeopardized if the Soviet Union succeeded in its goal of gobbling up the Arab world, the oil deposits of the Persian Gulf and much of East Africa. It is Israel’s ability to stop the advance of the Soviet Union through its Arab clients which alone prevents that triumphal march,” he said.

Considering this and the recent major change in the military pattern of the area because of the arrival of thousands of Russian troops to man new and sophisticated SAM-3 missiles. Rabbi Kaufman declared it was especially unfortunate that the U.S. had recently denied shipment of further Phantom aircraft to Israel. Rabbi Kaufman made his remarks at Wayne State University tonight to the opening session of a two-day conference on the Middle East and Soviet Jewry being conducted for communal and student leaders in the Detroit area by B’nai B’rith International Council. Billy B. Goldberg, of Houston, chairman of B’nai B’rith cabinet on Israel affairs, told the meeting that it was “odd, and of continuing concern, that the one democracy in the area, threatened on every side by countries which daily announce their intention to destroy it, should be presented as a military threat to its neighbors. Israel’s military position now, as always, is a purely defensive one.”

SISCO IN CAIRO PROCLAIMS U.S. WANTS TO BE FRIEND OF ALL PEOPLE IN AREA

Washington Post correspondent Jesse W. Lewis, Jr., reported from Cairo that Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco arrived in the Egyptian capital Friday and said the United States wants to see a just peace replace the senseless killing and destruction in the Middle East. America wants to be the friend of all the people in the area, he said at Cairo’s International Airport. Mr. Sisco reiterated American support for the United Nations Security Council resolution of November 1967. “We support that resolution because it looks ahead to a peace which would be mutually beneficial to all and give unfair advantage to none,” he said. “I have come to see and hear for myself, to understand your concerns, your hopes, your expectations. I look forward to the opportunity that my presence here affords for a first-hand exchange of views and the opportunity that it affords to deepen the dialogue between the United States and the nations of the Middle East.”

Mr. Sisco’s trip to Mideast capitals has been officially described as an “orientation tour” prior to his meeting in Teheran April 20 with the U.S. chiefs of mission in the Mideast. Press reports from Cairo say he has already been informed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad that Egypt insists on nothing less than Israel’s total withdrawal from the Arab territories it occupied in the June. 1967 war. There was no official U.S. statement following the Sisco-Riad meeting but informed sources in Cairo said it was made clear to the American diplomat that peace could be achieved only by fulfilling that condition. President Nasser told the newly formed Central Committee for Preparing People for Battle yesterday that there was no alternative to war with Israel which would be long and fierce. According to news dispatches, Nasser said that “Strictly speaking” a cease-fire agreement with Israel never existed because it was not accepted by the enemy.” Mr. Sisco, who is Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, is the first American diplomat of high rank to visit Egypt since Cairo broke diplomatic relations with the U.S. during the June, 1967 war. He will visit Jerusalem, Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon before going to Teheran. Diplomatic sources in the Middle East believe he would discuss during his tour recent signs of progress in the Big Four talks on the Middle East, and also some American concessions believed made in bilateral conversations with the Soviet Union. Mr. Sisco and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin resumed the bilateral talks in Washington last month.