Three Knesset members sharply questioned the sincerity of Egyptian and Soviet intentions toward peace in the Middle East here last night but said that peace will come to the region in the long run if the United States backs up Israel and maintains its military strength. Moshe Carmel, a member of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said that until a genuine peace is achieved. “Israel prefers security without peace to peace without security.” Mr. Carmel and his colleagues. Aharon Becker and Hans Klinghoffer, addressed the first national board meeting of the American Zionist Federation. The three are parliamentary advisors to the Israeli Mission to the United Nations. Mr. Klinghoffer, a leader of Gahal, an opposition faction in the Knesset since it quit the coalition government last July, said that the current “cease-fire could have served the purpose of creating new hopes for the establishment of peace” but “was misused by Egypt and Russia.” Furthermore, he noted, the Arab-Soviet move to force a Mideast dispute in the General Assembly also demonstrated a lack of interest in achieving peace.
Mr. Becker, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, declared that the new Soviet missiles in the truce zone were a more realistic indicator of the Kremlin’s intentions than all the speeches of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the UN. At an earlier session in the meeting. Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the AZF, denounced Jews who are “maligners of Zionism” and espouse the cause of the New Left. He predicted that the Federation, established six months ago as the umbrella organization of the Zionist movement in this country, would soon have units in 20 major American cities. Units have already been set up, he said, in six cities–Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Rochester, N.Y. Rabbi Miller claimed that the Federation’s growth was the answer to those “who maliciously, willfully or through ignorance reject the basic concepts” on which Zionism is based. He assailed “self-hating Jews who mouth the cannards of the New Left and who join the venom brigade of spokesmen for the Black Panthers and Arab terrorists.” Rabbi Miller declared that “What is involved in the Middle East is not merely the fate of Israel, but the fate of the entire free world.”
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