Scott, Jackson Say Support for Israel’s Survival Transcends Party Lines

Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott and Washington (State) Democrat Henry Jackson agreed here that United States foreign policy transcends party views when it involves support for Israel’s survival. The two legislators offered this bipartisan view at the concluding session Friday of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which held its 12th annual national policy conference here and also marked Israel’s 23rd anniversary. After reading prepared remarks that “we are providing Israel with arms she must have to protect herself,” and that “this policy must and will continue,” Scott told the audience, “I can candidly tell you that this policy will continue under any administration of either party.” Addressing Scott as much as the 350 AIPAC delegates, Jackson said, “We do work together on the Middle East.” He also said, “as Senator Scott has said, let Egypt and Israel sit down at the conference table to work things out and not have this Mickey Mouse operation of one in one room and one in another and the United Nations somewhere way off.” Scott said that the U.S. “should insist that Arab states recognize Israel and obligate themselves to work for attainment and maintenance of genuine peace.” He said he fully supported Israel’s insistence on defensible borders, adding that Israel “can no longer live in a state of siege with an international canopy which is swiftly blown away by the first blustering wind from Cairo out of Moscow.”

For the second time in two weeks, Jackson criticized the Mideast views of Secretary of State William P. Rogers. He said Rogers’ acceptance of a “military police force involving both Russian and American troops in the Mideast would sanction a permanent Soviet military presence and would constitute a threat to the Middle East and world peace.” He said U.S. policy was being made with “a naive optimism as to Soviet intentions.” He again urged phased withdrawal of Soviet forces from Egypt as part of the overall peace settlement. Irving Kane, Cleveland attorney and president of AIPAC read a message from Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine who was assailed at the AIPAC luncheon Thursday by Gerald Ford of Detroit, Republican leader in the House who charged that Muskie made a remark to Soviet Premier Alexsei Kosygin during a visit to Moscow last January which tended to undermine the credibility of American deterrent to growing Soviet military involvement against Israel.” In reply, Muskie said he had made it clear in his visit to Cairo and Moscow that he was committed to Israel’s survival and that in Moscow he urged boundary adjustments to implement Israel’s security. Sen. George McGovern, South Dakota Democrat, told AIPAC and the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington joint session Thursday night that American experience in Indochina must not prevent the U.S. from maintaining Mideast power balance and Israel’s survival. He said American leaders had the duty “to educate our constituents to the vital distinction between preventing war in the Mideast by placing the American guaranty behind Israel’s right to survive and perpetuating the war in Indochina.”

Sen. Robert J. Dole of Kansas, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said it was against the “grim memory of the holocaust” that “many of us have come to think of Israel as a test case for our civilization, for if we fail in our responsibility to humanity a second time could we ourselves sur- vive? He said that whenever the U.S. has hesitated to provide Israel with requested arms, in the hope that this might initiate mutual restraint, the Russians have unhesitatingly “escalated their involvement by sending more MIGs and missiles to Egypt. An AIPAC policy statement, presented by Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation, appealing to the Nixon administration to reconsider its stand on territorial issues so that Israel might negotiate freely and establish agreed and secure boundaries, was adopted by the conference.