Robert St. John, the noted non-Jewish author, foreign correspondent and broadcaster, warned here last night that Israel may not survive unless Jews everywhere, especially in the United States, are jolted out of their complacency. Addressing delegates to the 46th annual convention of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs comprising some 50,000 members affiliated with Conservative synagogues in the U.S. and Canada, St. John said Israel’s present problems pose a grave danger not only for the Jewish State but for Jews everywhere.
“I fear greatly for Israel’s survival and for the survival for all that is meant by your Jewishness,” he said. To support his concern, the former NBC broadcaster in World War II who covered all four Israeli-Arab wars as a newsman, cited a number of developments.
NUMBER OF DEVELOPMENTS CITED
* The Jordan-Syrian agreement on joint military action against Israel when and if war comes and the announcement by the Ford Administration that it favors selling Jordan arms, including a modern air-defense system costing $350 million and featuring “Hawk” surface-to-air missiles. At the same time, said St. John, the Ford Administration denies Israel the weapons it needs until the “American reassessment” is completed
* The pressure on Israel by President Ford, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for concessions in a further withdrawal in the Sinai.
* The erosion of support for Israel among the American public fueled, he charged, by the angry reaction of Ford and Kissinger to the petition signed by 76 Senators who openly backed Israel.
* This year’s shipments of American-made war materiel to Saudi Arabia totaling $1.5 billion –14 times what the U.S. sold her a year ago.
* The threat of the Arab countries and most of the Third World, with Communist support, to expel Israel from the United Nations.
* Investment of $1.94 billion of Arab money in the securities of U.S. corporations and U.S. Treasury notes and bonds during the first four months of 1975.
* The swelling tide of Arab students on U.S. campuses, most of whom are bitterly antagonistic toward visiting lecturers taking a friendly stance toward Israel.
* The “lies and half-truths” which appear regularly in letters-to-the-editor columns all over the nation in the guise of objectivity concerning the Middle East but which in fact, St. John alleged, add up to thinly-disguised anti-Semitism.
* Anti-Israel statements in slick publications financed by the soaring gasoline profits of oil companies. He mentioned as an example Aramco World Magazine, published by the Arabian-American Oil Company and sent free to a select list of American opinion-makers.
* The big lie technique employed by Arabs and their friends who say they have nothing against Jews; it’s only Zionists they hate.
URGES FULL-SCALE MOBILIZATION
St. John urged the delegates to organize campaigns to alert Jews to the dangers and to reply to distortions with positive facts. “As you do battle against all the forces of bigotry, stupidity and immorality,” he concluded, “know that you have a great many friends in the Christian world, Non-Jew though I am, I would not want to live in a world in which Israel could not exist and in which Jews could not continue to make their significant contribution to mankind’s climb from the mud to the stars.”
The National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs is affiliated with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the United Synagogue of America.
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