Workmen’s Circle Executive Board Urges U.S. Diplomacy to Promote Middle East Peace

The national executive board of the Workmen’s Circle urged the United States today to use its “diplomatic weapons” to bring about Arab-Israeli peace talks under the nine-point program offered by Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban in his address before the United Nations General Assembly last Tuesday. The Jewish labor fraternal order also called on the U.S. to continue military assistance to Israel and condemned the Soviet rearmament of the Arab states “at a time when peace is so essential to the Middle East.”

The labor fraternal order, which held its annual meeting here, condemned the anti-Semitism of some Black Power militants but urged American Jews to continue their support of civil rights for Negroes and to reject “attempts to meet Black Power with white backlash.” Joseph Mlotek, educational director, called for a revision of social studies curricula in American primary schools, high schools and colleges to include the contributions made by all ethnic groups in the development of America. He said that the contribution made by American Jews in the past 300 years “should be given the prominence it merits” in an expanded American history curriculum. He noted that primary and secondary schools maintained by the Workmen’s Circle have long been teaching about the historical and cultural contributions made by Negroes and other ethnic groups in the U.S.