The National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress proposed at a meeting today that President Johnson summon Prime Minister Eshkol of Israel and King Hussein of Jordan to meet for peace talks aboard the flagship of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean with himself as mediator.
President Johnson’s personal intervention was urged “in light of the fact that the United States is the only country that has consistently maintained close relations with Israel and Jordan and because the President is personally friendly with both King Hussein and Prime Minister Eshkol,” the AJC body said. It cited as a precedent the initiative taken by President Theodore Roosevelt in bringing Russia and Japan to the peaceable at Portsmouth, N.H. in 1905 to end the Russo-Japanese war. The Council asserting that the United Nations had failed to either prevent aggression or bring about a lasting peace, said the Security Council resolution of March 24 “revealed a fundamental inability to distinguish either cause and effect or aggressor and victim.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
