Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, addressing 1000 persons at his Friday night services at Holy Blossom Temple, predicted that the combined forces of the various segments of the new and old left, and those who have been “professionally” involved in the fight against the Vietnam War, will, now that the war has ended, combine forces to find a new target. That new target, he warned, will be Israel.
Dr. Plaut, who has been among those opposed to the American intervention in Vietnam, said that a “professional cadre came to dominate a formidable army of political moralists who suddenly found themselves out of employment. They have no real target, but they need to continue their marching momentum…. It is my belief that unless something entirely new happens on the international scene, Israel will likely become the focus for their unused energies.”
Among the various symptoms that Dr. Plaut mentioned was the recent address at the National Council of Churches in the U.S. delivered by Leroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka) who made “vituperative attacks on Israel and its Jewish function in the world – an attack that went largely unopposed from the assemblage of the Protestant churches.” He also included in this category the First Unitarian Church in Toronto which invited as its speaker John Nicholls Booth, an anti-Israel activist whose material had appeared in Gerald L.K. Smith’s hate sheet, “The Cross and the Flag.”
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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.
