Severe criticism of a meeting held here yesterday protesting against the Israel Government for alleged “persecution and maltreatment” of religious Jews in Israel, was voiced here today by the National Committee For Traditional Judaism, rabbinical affiliate of the Mizrachi Organization of America, which represents 400 rabbis in the United States.
Similar criticism was voiced by the Hapoel Hamizrachi of America, the religious labor Zionist organization. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which represents Orthodox synagogues in this country for 56 years, disassociated itself from the group which sponsored the protest meeting under the name of the United Orthodox Jewish Congregations and Organizations. The Union warned that it may take legal action to prevent the use of any name that may be confused in the minds of the public with its own.
The meeting, which was attended by about 3,500 persons, was marked by fist fights and general disorder, including catcalls and the throwing of leaflets into the air. It brought police and firemen to the hall. Because of the age of some of the fighters, no one was arrested. During the meeting an anonymous phone call to the police brought 20 members of the bomb squad to the building, but no explosives were found. Resolutions adopted at the meeting called on the Israel Government to “stop planning to uproot Judaism from the Holy Land, stop beating up rabbis, imprisoning and torturing religious Jews, desecrating synagogues and forcing immorality upon the populace.”
In criticizing the meeting, the Mizrachi rabbis said that the charges enumerated in the resolution “are false and sheer fantasy and deserve to be treated as such.” Rabbi Jacob Levinson, chairman of the National Committee for Traditional Judaism, declared that the “so-called United Orthodox Jewish Congregations and Organizations of America, “which sponsored the protest meeting, “represents a group of extremists which has been officially repudiated by all American traditional rabbinical and lay Orthodox organizations. We profoundly regret the unseemly behavior of the insignificant but vociferous minority which gathered in the Manhattan Center Sunday to make a series of wholly preposterous charges against the State of Israel,” the statement declared.
The statement of the Hapoel Hamizrachi said: “It is unfortunate that self-appointed, irresponsible elements such as these have chosen to arouse American public feeling against Israel and her institutions at a time when the Jewish world has been plunged into deep mourning over the cold-blooded execution by the Egyptian Government of two Jews falsely accused of espionage.”
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