Zionists Jeopardize Status of U.S. Jews. Dorothy Thompson Tells Council for Judaism

Terming the concept of “national minorities” an alien, Eastern-European import conflicting with fundamental American principles and traditions, Dorothy Thompson tonight accused leading Zionists of jeopardizing the equa civic status of American Jews by “the claim that every Jew in the world is a member of the Jewish People, or Nation.” This claim, she told 150 delegates and guests of the fifth annual meeting of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Council for Judaism, had previously been made only by anti-Semites and strongly resembled the Nazi racist philosophy.

Miss Thompson expressed alarm at the way, she said, American Jews are being indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda, “with the idea that they exist in this country–as everywhere outside of Israel–on dubious sufferance and that whatever happened in Germany could happen here any minute.” She denied that there was any analogy between the outbreak of Nazism in Germany and the danger in this country. In addition to this fear, the speaker said, “there is another tendency equally dangerous as it affects non-Jews, and that is to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”