The arrival here tomorrow of King Saud, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, will be ignored by the City of New York, Mayor Robert F. Wagner declared last night at a Jewish National Fund dinner. King Saud is arriving in this country as personal guest of President Eisenhower.
It was learned here today that State Department officials had expected that Mayor Wagner would formally greet the Saudi Arabian monarch with a ticker tape parade as he drives up from the pier to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to his 67-room suite. However, the Mayor’s office politely reminded the State Department officials that New York is the biggest Jewish-populated city in the world and that many Jews might feel offended because of the anti-Jewish sentiments which King Saud has expressed publicly on more than one occasion.
In his address to the JNF dinner last night, Mayor Wagner said: “There appears to be two visits by foreign rulers that may begin here, One of these is the dictator of Yugoslavia. We don’t want him in New York because he is a Communist and because he is anti-religious. As far as we are concerned, he will get no consideration here. And the same goes for King Saud, and double, too. I don’t care whether it is diplomatic or not.” The Mayor’s stand was strongly supported by Joseph T. Sharkey, majority leader of the City Council, who spoke at the same dinner.
Dr. Harris J. Levine, president of the Jewish National Fund of America, assailed the report of Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations, submitted to the General Assembly and ordering Israel out of the Gaza Strip and the island of Tiran in the Gulf of Akaba as an “act of injustice, reeking with appeasement and redolent of self-abasement.” Referring to the situation created by the Hammarskjold’s report to the United Nations, Dr. Levine said:
“The conscience of the world sustained a jolt and the United Nations a severe loss when Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations, in his report to the UN Assembly ordered Israel troops out of Gaza and the Gulf of Akaba, without as much as seriously considering Israel’s contention that the yielding of these two strategic points to Egypt would expose the State of Israel once again to Egyptian attacks by land and sea. Israel’s moral position in retaining its hold on both the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Akaba as measures for self-defense against unprovoked Egyptian assaults, is unassailable. This has been conceded in many quarters.”
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