American Jewish Congress Asks U.S. to Admit Jews Expelled from Egypt

The American Jewish Congress concluded today a two-day joint meeting of its national executive and administrative committees with the adoption of a resolution calling upon the United States Government to give haven to Jews expelled from Egypt. The resolution also asked President Eisenhower to intervene with Egyptian President Col. Nasser to halt his policy of anti-Jewish persecution. It urged the American delegation to the United Nations to take the lead in the UN General Assembly for action against Egypt’s violation of human rights.

In another resolution, the AJC urged the U.S. Congress to amend the Middle East resolution now pending before it to include provisions that would withhold American military or economic aid from any country in that area which fails to “pledge itself to the cessation of belligerency and to negotiations for peace.”

Expressing its approval of the Eisenhower Doctrine as “the first step” in the formulation of an overall American policy for the area, the American Jewish Congress nevertheless went on record as warning that unless the program is broadened to deal with the Arab-Israel conflict, “it will prove in the end to be ineffectual, not only for the goal of establishing peace and security in the Middle East, but even for its immediate purpose of deterring Communist aggression.”

Another resolution voiced “dismay” at the moves undertaken at the United Nations to force the unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, with no provisions made for the security of Israel’s borders and the free use of international waterways.

The AJC also called upon the U.S. State Department to lift its ban on travel to the Middle East. A report on U.S. immigration policy proposed “drastic overhauling of the McCarran-Walter Law” as “the only way in which the U. S. can deal fairly and adequately with the problem of Hungarian and Egyptian refugees.”