The chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), Bennett Yanowitz, today called on President Reagan ” to press for arrangements that will avoid Israel’s need to act again in its self defense.”
“The issue is not Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon,” Yanowitz said in a telegram to the President released simultaneously in New York and Washington, “but of conditioning withdrawal on arrangements that will prevent Lebanon from being used as a launching pad for attacks against Israel, and that will restore Lebanese sovereignty which was destroyed by the PLO and Syria.”
Yanowitz appealed to Reagan to “stand against punitive action directed at Israel by the UN or even by officials of our own government.” The telegram was released after more than 1,000 Jewish community leaders in 50 cities throughout the U.S.
were briefed by Yanowitz and Gen. Natan Sharon, a recently retired chief planner for the Israel Defense Forces, through a conference call arranged by NJCRAC Sharon was sent by the government of Israel to the U.S. to provide background on events in Lebanon, the NJCRAC said.
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