Scott Tells Hadassah Convention Nixon Intends to Keep Commitments to Israel

President Nixon means to keep his commitments to Israel, Senator Hugh Scott, Republican of Pennsylvania, last night told delegates to the 56th annual convention of Hadassah. After warning that peace in the Middle East could not be imposed by the Big Powers but must be reached by negotiations between Israel and the Arab states, the Senator departed from his prepared text to say: “The President has said to me many times that ‘I have made certain commitments to Israel. I will keep those commitments.'” In a second departure from his text, and referring to the cease-fire violations, the Senator asked: “Have any missiles moved since the first 24 hours? Have they been returned? If not, why not? It is my judgment the U.S. must move energetically to see that this situation is rectified, reversed and whatever else is necessary.” Earlier. Sen. Scott had warned that “nothing smacking of an imposed settlement–no advance blueprints, or even suggested maps should be imposed upon Israel and the Arab nations.” The Senate Minority leader said it was his conviction that no lasting Arab-Israeli peace was possible under the domination of Moscow or if imposed upon Israel by the U.S. “We cannot dictate peace,” the Senator said, “but we can insist that Arabs and Israelis, in direct communication and understanding, negotiate a real peace treaty. We must assure a peace initiated, enforced and adhered to by the people whose lives and nations are affected.

Mrs. Max Schenk, president of Hadassah, told the 2.500 delegates attending last night’s opening session that Israel’s “physical existence” was endangered by the presence of Egypt’s Russian-built missiles in the Canal Zone. And she urged President Nixon to use his influence to have the missiles removed from the area. Referring to Israel’s statement that it has agreed to the 90-day cease-fire only upon American assurance that no missiles would be moved forward in the Canal zone during the cease-fire period, Mrs. Schenk said, “Our confidence and hope are steadfast in our President, his promise, in his assurance that out of this attempt at peace there may not come disaster. We hope that President Nixon will not abdicate by one iota the position he has taken. The hinge that opened the door to the present cease-fire was made by the reassurances of the President. Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation, told the delegates last night that “as we enter the early stages of the acceptance of Secretary (of State William P.) Rogers’ initiative, we must realize that what is involved in the Middle East is not merely the fate of Israel, but the fate of the entire free world.” The confrontation in the Mideast, he said. is no longer simply stated as a battle “in which the Arab states wish to destroy Israel.” The adversaries now are an “expansionist Soviet Union against a small nation representing all democratic countries valiantly fighting not only for its own life, but for the concept of freedom and liberty.”

RABBI MILLER: SELF-HATING JEWS SOW SEEDS OF ANTI-SEMITISM UNDER GUISE OF ANTI-ZIONISM

Rabbi Miller said that Zionism has been maligned as much as Americanism in recent days “by those who maliciously, willfully or through ignorance reject the basic concepts upon which they are both based.” He scored the “ignorant self-hating Jews who mouth the canards of the New Left and who have joined the venom brigade of spokesmen for the Black Panthers.” Rabbi Miller warned that these Jews are destroying themselves spiritually and culturally and that they are sowing the seeds of anti-Semitic hatred under the false facade of anti-Zionism. In the light of the “abysmal ignorance” of Jewish values and the meaning of Israel which prevails among American Jewish students, Rabbi Miller called for an intensified educational program to reach students more effectively. He observed: “The organized Jewish community, it must be said, has been woefully lacking in the proper techniques and funding for carrying out such programs which could, among other things, provide our students with the means for combatting the highly-organized and well-financed propaganda of the 10,000 Arab students in the United States who are propagandists first and students second.” Focusing on the theme of the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, Mordechai Bar-On, member of the Jewish Agency Executive and head of the Youth and Hechalutz Department, said today there is a difference between these two. “However.” he noted, “many anti-Semites hide their prejudices under the guise of anti-Zionism.” Mr. Bar-On said that the older definitions of Zionism do not apply today, when the test is a very simple one: the acceptance of the existence of a Jewish state.

“Whether a persons believes in aliyah, immigration, for himself or not, is not the issue,” Mr. Bar-On said. Talking of radical Jewish youth, he said that they do not seem to understand that, “The Jews should have the same right of self-determination as other peoples.” The type of radical Jewish youth who scorns Zionism today stems from the classical “liberal” tradition of the French Revolution which said: As human beings you will receive everything; as Jews nothing. “Conceptually, this position deprives the Jews of their collective rights.” Mr. Bar-On explained. “This point of view is intellectual anti-Semitism, which is counter to the current democratic philosophy of pluralism.” Mrs. Charlotte Jacobson, national chairman of Hadassah’s Medical Organization announced today that American Hadassah had pledged $1 million for research in honor of the staff of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center on the 15th anniversary of the medical center at Ein Karen. The center trains students from as far away as Burma and Nigeria and patients have flown to Israel for treatment at the center from Iran, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Europe and other parts of the world, Mrs. Jacobson said. By 1972 Hadassah will have a 300-bed hospital at Mount Scopus in full operation to serve the 70,000 Arabs in Old Jerusalem and near by areas.