Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, chairman of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, today issued a statement calling on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to retain an anti-discrimination clause which Chairman J. W. Ful-bright, with State Department agreement, is seeking to delete from pending Mutual Security legislation.
Rabbi Bernstein said: “This anti-discrimination statement is a temperate reaffirmation of principles adopted by Congress last year, and was written into the Foreign Aid bill by the Administration itself.”
He said there had been wide criticism of the United States failure to challenge discrimination by foreign governments against American citizens and “failure to insist that all our citizens are entitled to equal protection.”
His committee was “gratified when Peace Corps director R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. , announced that the Peace Corps would not go into countries that discriminate. ” Because the Peace Corps stand is consistent “with American’s best traditions, ” Rabbi Bernstein said, “it is all the more regrettable therefore to learn that the clause may be deleted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
Dr. Bernstein voiced hope that the Senate committee “will reconsider and reaffirm the position Congress has taken on this issue in the past.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
