Murphy Explains Question Dealing with Jews and Whales

A New York Congressman expressed regret today over the “misinterpretation” of his intentions when he asked constituents recently whether they thought the U.S. “should use trade to influence foreign policy in other countries, as in the case of Jewish emigration from Russia and the overkilling of whales by the Japanese.”

“There was no intent on my part to imply that the Soviet Jewry issue and the threatened extinction of whales by Japanese fishing fleets were similar,” Rep. John M. Murphy, a Democrat from Staten Island, said in a letter to Malcolm Hoenlein, chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. The text of his letter was made available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Murphy said that the question, part of a questionnaire he mailed to his constituents last month, utilized “only two of the many examples that would have been used for the same question.” He said he picked the Soviet Jewry issue and the overkill of whales because “both received considerable publicity and are therefore well understood by the residents of the 17th Congressional District.”

The juxtaposition of Soviet Jews and whales and another question on whether the U.S. should supply arms to Israel and the Arab states contained in Murphy’s questionnaire, raised questions in Jewish circles as to what the Congressman was implying.

Murphy contended in his letter that this was due to a “misinterpretation.” He said that “out of the thousands of questionnaires received in my Washington, Manhattan and Staten Island offices there have becomes completion ###or the intent of the question….The question is certainly not one of the rights of Jews versus whales.” Murphy described himself as a supporter of the Jackson Amendment to the foreign trade bill and said he had “a clear record of support for Israel and the freedom of the Jews,”