Sen. J. William Fulbright’s charge on a television panel interview Sunday that the U.S. Senate was “subservient” to Israel was hailed in Cairo but denounced here by Premier Golda Meir. In an interview published Monday in the Mapam newspaper. Al Hamishmar, Mrs. Meir asked. “Can you remember when Sen. Fulbright has said anything positive about Israel?”
She characterized the Arkansas Democrat, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as “a man who hasn’t slept nights for years because under American law part of the United Jewish Appeal funds are free of income tax.”
But the Cairo newspapers, Al Akhbar and AI Ahram, said Fulbright’s remarks on the CBS “Face the Nation” program constituted “a courageous voice of truth” on the Middle East. Al Akhbar printed the Senator’s statements in English on its front page and urged Arabs to write him expressing “appreciation of this bold man to make him realize that we respect and uphold the supporters of right and justice.”
Al Ahram said that Fulbright and President Tito of Yugoslavia who also spoke Sunday, agree “that America is the main factor for all the crimes that Israel commits. No one would blame us then for bringing pressure to bear on the U.S. for everybody knows that America is the root of the whole trouble.”
Mrs. Meir said that Fulbright “has been searching for years” for some loophole to void the tax exemption of UJA contributions. “Maybe one day he’ll find something,” she said. She recalled that when Assistant Secretary of State-for-Near Eastern Affairs Joseph J. Sisco testified before Fulbright’s committee, the Senator asked: “It doesn’t worry you that so much money flows to Israel?” Mrs. Meir said, “Money is flowing from government loans under American law so why is he so worried.”
Fulbright maintained in his television remarks that Congressional subservience to Israel prevented the Administration from exerting the leverage on Jerusalem that it had because “we supply a major part of the wherewithal to finance or pay for everything that Israel does.”
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