Sca Rejects Arab Charges, Repeats Criticism of Security Council

The Synagogue Council of America repeated today its criticism of the United Nations Security Council for alleged “one-sidedness” in dealing with the Middle East. A statement issued by Rabbi Solomon J. Sharfman, SCA president, replied to the Jordanian Ambassador to the UN, Mohamed H, el-Farra, who had accused the SCA and its constituent bodies of being a “Zionist organization.” The Council is the coordinating agency for the national rabbinic and congregational organizations of Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jewry in America. The Jordanian envoy assailed it at the Security Council July 2 because it had condemned the Security Council’s unanimous censure of Israel for altering the status of East Jerusalem.

Rabbi Sharfman declared that the Synagogue Council and its constituents were religious organizations whose “overriding commitment is not to any political ideology but to the imperatives that derive from religious faith.” Rabbi Sharfman said “It is in fidelity to this religious obligation that the Synagogue Council of America, as a religious agency, condemned the double standard that led certain world leaders and nations comprising the Security Council to censure Israel’s attack against Beirut Airport last December while passing in silence over Arab attacks against Israeli planes and lives” and to censure Israel “for measures it has taken to unify Jerusalem.”