The American Jewish Committee lauded “the constructive position” taken by the governing board of the National Council of Churches (NCC) in an NCC policy statement which the AJ Committee said opposed “the double standards which some members of the United Nations have sought unfairly and immorally to inflict upon the State of Israel, among others.”
Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, director of the AJ Committee interreligious affairs department, and Rabbi James Rudin, assistant director, referred to a policy statement approved in Cincinnati at the semi-annual meeting May 4-6 of the NCC governing board which “specifically states that no nation state can be excluded from membership in the UN or its specialized agencies.”
The AJ Committee officials said that the NCC policy statement “will put an end at an early date to the vigilante tactics and lynch mob mentality which anti-Israel forces have created in recent years at the United Nations and among its specialized agencies.” They said that if the NCC statement, which was “overwhelmingly adopted,” is taken seriously, it would “help contribute to the desperately needed credibility of the UN.”
ACTION AGAINST FORMER NAZIS, RACISTS
The two officials also said the AJ Committee “welcomes the action taken by the governing board in adopting a constitutional amendment that would make it impossible for former Nazis like Archbishop Valerian Trifa or racists to hold positions of membership and honor” within the NCC. They said they “looked forward to an early action on the part of the NCC based upon this bylaw that will lead to the removal of Trifa, a former commandant of the Rumanian Iron Guard, from the governing board.”
Rudin reported that the NCC delegates rejected a pro-Arab resolution that the U.S. “put the test of human rights” to countries in the Middle East, including those “most beholden” to the United States, which was understood to mean Israel. The resolution, proposed by Dr. Frank Maria, a lay member of the Syrian Antiochan Church, also proposed that the NCC should start and complete by next November a review of the status of human rights in Israel and on the West Bank.
The governing board, in repudiating Maria’s proposal, adopted a resolution urging that the United States support the goal that human rights be applied equally in all countries.
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