Miller, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said today that Cairo’s latest threat not to renew the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force “is but another example of pressure tactics that the world accepts as perfectly legitimate when practiced by the Arabs and as perfectly horrid when done by the Israelis. In an age that suffers no shortage of irony, one of the great paradoxes of the current international political scene is the picture that is being painted of Israel as stubborn, obdurate and unwilling to make the concessions necessary for a settlement with her Arab neighbors.”
Referring to the action of 40 Islamic countries in calling for the expulsion of Israel from the UN and all other international bodies, Rabbi Miller said this “underscores again how far the Arab world–including the ‘moderate’ Sadat–must travel before there can be even the beginning of peace in the Middle East.”
The Egyptians and the PLO seem to have made a common decision, he observed. “Their goals are strengthened in a crisis atmosphere, which they seek to foster with threats of war and oil embargos and now with the threat of the removal of the UNEF and the threat of the expulsion of Israel from the UN. They disregard the efforts that are underway to reach a mutually acceptable solution. The Arabs are underestimating the spirit of fair play in America and the moral underpinning of United States foreign policy, even as they underestimate Israel’s will and unity.”
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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.
