National Committee for Jews in Arab Countries Planned in Israel

A “national committee” for the Jews in Arab countries–modeled on the National Committee for Russian Jewry–will be established shortly under the chairmanship of Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen. The announcement was made by Aryeh L. Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency, at a rally yesterday in the Mann Auditorium for immigrants from Arab lands. The occasion was the second anniversary of the hangings of Jews in Baghdad. Police Minister Shlomo Hillel declared at the rally: “We shall not remain silent over the ill treatment and persecution of the Jews in the Arab countries. The world will not accept such barbarism and hatred.” He charged the United Nations with failing to act on the problem. Eliahu Sasson, a Labor member of the Knesset and Hillel’s predecessor as Police Minister, reported details of the torture of Jews in Arab states. Leah Slovin, an immigrant from Russia, added: “We have a common enemy, common fate and common struggle.”

The Knesset adopted yesterday a resolution calling on the world “to take all the steps which will insure that the Jews who are incarcerated and persecuted in the Arab countries will be rescued and brought to a country where they will be safe.” All the Israeli parties but the pro-Moscow Rakach Communists voted for the resolution. It stated in part: “On this day two years ago our Jewish brethren in Iraq who were innocent of any crime were hanged. Today the Knesset communes with the memory of those martyrs and with our brethren who were murdered or tortured to death in the prisons of Iraq. The Knesset condemns in the strongest terms the denial of the rights of man to the Jews in the Arab countries and demands that an end be put to the oppression, discrimination and degradation imposed on them, which have recently worsened, especially in Syria.” The Knesset also called for emigration rights for those Jews, and asked the United Nations, individual governments, international organization, religious leaders and intellectuals to “demand emphatically and without delay” that the Jews in Arab lands “be freed.” Meanwhile, the Israel Students Organization has decided to launch an effort to explain the plight of the Jews in Arab countries to students on campuses around the world. The student organization held rallies at Tel Aviv University, Beersheba University. Bar-Ilan University and the Haifa Technion and University, as well as on Mt. Scopus and at the site of the new university in Jerusalem.