Ongoing Dialoge Planned Between Religious Leaders and White House on Foreign Aid, Human Rights Issue

A group of 30 national Jewish and Christian religious leaders who met last week for 2-1/2 hours at the White House with President Carter and top Administration aides to express their support for the foreign aid package before Congress are scheduled to hold a similar meeting Thursday, Rabbi Marc Tanenboum, national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Similar meetings over the next few weeks and months are being planned, he added. These meetings may also include, in addition to Carter, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. In addition, Jewish and Christian leaders are meeting today in New York to arrange for conferences with majority and minority leaders in both houses of Congress, Tanenbaum said, to help assure the passage of a maximum foreign aid bill.

According to Tanenbaum, the meetings with Carter and top Administration officials constitute an ongoing dialogue on the issue of foreign aid and human rights. He said that when the President was asked if he was willing to participate in such a dialogue, the nation’s chief executive indicated that he was.

Tanenbaum told the JTA that this dialogue may be the first of its kind on a sustained basis between Administration officials and religious leaders in the area of foreign aid and human rights. It is also unprecedented in that it represents a broad-based effort of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical Christians, Greek Orthodox, Jewish and Black religious leaders to support a foreign aid package which includes $1.75 billion in economic and military aid to Israel, Tanenbaum said. The foreign aid appropriations measure, which has already been approved by the House and Senate, with some variations, must now be reconciled by a House-Senate Conference. The measure for the fiscal year beginning Oct. I may not be finalized until after Labor Day, he said.

JOINT STATEMENT ISSUED

During their meeting last week, the religious leaders issued a joint statement urging Congress to resist any further reductions in foreign aid. Nothing that there are multitudes throughout the world “who live in conditions of absolute poverty, deprived of basic nutrition, without adequate shelter, education, health care of employment,” the joint statement added:

“We have both pressing needs and poor people here in our own society, but the added burden of the global poor is that they have even less voice and visibility in our midst. Our purpose…is to call attention to the urgency of their needs and to reassert the moral responsibility we have as members of the international community to do our part on their behalf.”

Tanenbaum, in discussing the rationale for the support by religious leaders of foreign aid, said: “While some Americans object to foreign aid, especially at this time of inflation and high unemployment, the plain fact of the matter is that America, still the wealthiest nation in the world, contributes less than one percent of our entire federal budget in aid of starving millions of human beings. Of the 17 nations that have foreign aid programs, the U.S. ranks 13th.”

The meeting last week was arranged on two levels, Tanenbaum noted. The Synagogue Council of America coordinated the Jewish organizations which were represented, and Tanenbaum was the consultant in getting together the Jewish and Christian leaders.

The Jewish leaders at the meeting were: Rabbi Benjamin Kreitman, executive vice president, United Synagogue of America; Rabbi Ely Pilchik, president, Central Conference of American Rabbis; Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz, president, Rabbinical Assembly; Rabbi Bernard Rosensweig, president, Rabbinical Council of America; Rabbi Henry Siegman, executive vice president, Synagogue Council of America; and Tanenbaum.