The regional director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference issued a statement here on behalf of the organization deploring persecution of the Jews in the Arab states and condemning it as “morally despicable.”
Rev. Leonard Smalls declared that “the mass executions which are in reality lynchings of Christians, Moslems, and Jews by the Iraqi Government, bear direct and dreadful witness to that Government’s dismal policy of mistreatment and persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.”
The Negro leader also condemned the continued detention in Syria of two Israelis, seized from the hijacked Trans World Airlines plane on Aug. 29. He said that “these despicable acts totally contradict Christian and Moslem moral principles.” Rev. Smalls also protested the “sad plight of the several thousand Jews in Syria, Iraq and Egypt.” He said his organization called on the United States Government, the United Nations and men of goodwill everywhere to prevail on the Arab regimes “to end, once and for all, the persecution of their Jewish and other minorities.”
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.
