Charges by Jewish spokesmen that Israel’s Six-Day War proved the “failure and futility” of Jewish-Christian dialogue were termed “malicious distortion” and “narcisstic nonsense” this weekend by Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly.
The Conservative rabbinical leader also declared, in a statement here, that it was not true that there had been “an inadequate response” from Christians during the Middle East crisis, when Israel was “in danger of annihilation.” He asserted that “most Christians in the United States and, indeed, all of Europe, both East and West, sided with Israel’s cause in May and June.”
Demonstrations and petitions were signed and joined by hundreds and thousands of Christians in America, France, Holland, etc.,” Rabbi Kelman asserted. “There were also thousands of individual Christian clergymen, many of great distinction, who took forthright and unequivocal positions demanding that commitments to Israel be honored and that all necessary action be taken to thwart the conspiracy to destroy Israel.”
He said that clergymen such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. John Bennett, president of Union Theological Seminary, Archbishop Hallinan and Cardinal Cushing, Dr. Reinhold Niebhur and “thousands of other clergymen of all denominations publicly expressed their identification with the anxiety which all Jews felt for the continued survival of the Jews in Israel and the integrity of the Jewish State.”
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.
