U.S. Urged to Protest Barring of Prominent American Jew by Lebanon

The American Jewish Committee today asked Secretary of State Dean Rusk to make “vigorous representations” to the Government of Lebanon against its continuing discriminatory policy which yesterday resulted in the barring of Andrew Goodman, AJC vice-president, and his wife, from entry into Lebanon despite their possession of an American passport and a valid Lebanese visa.

Mr. Goodman, president of Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York was barred along with Mrs. Goodman from entering Lebanon because he is on an Arab blacklist of persons active in support of fund-raising for Israel. The two were held at the Beirut airport for more than five hours. Mr. Goodman is active on behalf of the United Jewish Appeal and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Greater New York.

Dr. John Slawson, executive vice-president of the American Jewish Committee, in his appeal today to Secretary Rusk, said:

“Mr. Goodman is a vice-president of the American Jewish Committee and he and his wife are active in many civic and philanthropic causes. The arbitrary revocation by the Lebanese Government of their permission to enter that country as tourists, is more than a curtailment of American citizens’ right of travel for irrelevant and unacceptable reasons. By reaffirming a policy that undermines the integrity and the equality of United States citizenship, the Lebanese action is an affront to the dignity of the United States and contrary to our fundamental democratic principles.

“This latest incident reinforces our deep belief — as most recently expressed in our communication of last January — ‘that the time has come for the United States Government to take effective action to insist upon the final obliteration of these remaining intolerable distinctions made among our citizens’ by certain Arab states.”