Vets Feel ‘demeaned’ White House Rushes Richardson to Jwv Convention As Speaker After Vets Say They

The White House sent Elliot L. Richardson to address the Jewish War Veterans convention here within hours of being charged by the JWV’s national commander with deliberately avoiding speeches before Jewish groups. The Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was scheduled to address the organization this afternoon.

The White House responded to a telegram in which JWV. leader Jerome B. Cohen told President Nixon: “We have been trying desperately for six months to obtain a high Republican spokesman from the administration to articulate your position on public issues before our 77th annual national convention currently in session in Houston, Tex. The White House has been advised that the Democratic candidate for Vice President, Sargent Shriver, is scheduled to appear on Friday. As a politically nonpartisan organization, the JWV deems the White House position in refusing to dispatch such a speaker demeaning.”

Cohen added that “Indeed, we have sought such speakers from the administration since 1969 without avail.” He asked Nixon: “Are we to assume that the JWV organization, the oldest active war veterans group in the United States representing grass-roots Jewry, is remote from your political interests?”

Warren Adler, JWV spokesman, added to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that since its inception nearly four years ago, the Nixon administration “just didn’t recognize Jewish groups as very important.” He said the only instance in that period of a top administration figure delivering a major speech to a Jewish organization was Vice President Spiro T. Agnew’s appearance last June before the Religious Zionists of America.

Joseph J. Sisco, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and the White House’s resident Middle East expert, will address the JWV convention Saturday night in an appearance arranged in the spring. But Adler explained that the JWV considers Sisco “a career diplomat and not a political spokesman for the administration.” The White House, he said, offered as today’s speaker Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R. N.Y.), Undersecretary of Labor Laurence H. Silberman, and other Republican officials–all Jews. But the JWV, he said, insisted on someone of “Cabinet rank or above,” and considers Richardson “very acceptable.”

Albert E. Arent, chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, told the JWV delegates yesterday that in the face of the social disorders confronting the United States, “it is difficult for the Jewish leadership to show proper concern for the minority groups whose emergence from years of oppression has sparked the terrible problems of our changing society.”

He said that was one of the reasons why the “so-called Jewish Establishment, of which the Jewish War Veterans has long been an honored member, has become a convenient whipping boy for those who, for whatever reason, are unhappy about the inability of our society to find solutions for the problems of war, inflation, poverty, race, violence and disorder.”

He said the role of Jewish leadership was that of “trying to overcome backlash, of trying to give perspective, so that Jews, at least, will not buy quack remedies from people like George Wallace,” the Governor of Alabama, “or Frank Rizzo,” May or of Philadelphia, “so that Jews will not vote down school bond issues, federal aid to education, family welfare and equal opportunity legislation and whatever else may be necessary to lay a foundation for the long-range solutions.”

He added that Jewish leadership would not be properly fulfilling its role unless it recognizes the problems Jews are now facing and their reactions. He added that “until we can convince them that we understand their predicament and want to help, we cannot expect them to support our efforts in behalf of civil rights and social reform.” He warned that “unless solutions are found for the basic problems and poverty, the damage and insult which now offend and arouse so many Jews will seem like a slap on the wrist compared with the troubles ahead.”