Sorenson Raps ‘dangerous’ Attempt by Nixon to ‘link U.S. Policy in Vietnam with Israels’

Theodore Sorenson, one time aide to the late President John F. Kennedy, denounced here today the “dangerous and deliberate attempt” by the Nixon Administration to “link American policy in Vietnam with American policy in Israel.” In a Thanksgiving address at Kehillath Yeshurun synagogue, he said President Nixon “and his aides have explicitly solicited support for his Vietnam stance from Jewish leaders in this country and from Prime Minister Golda Meir” of Israel. He added that they had implied, “not always subtly, that this country could not sustain its commitments to Israel if it did not sustain its commitments to the regime in Saigon.”

He cited the “swelling tide of opposition in this country to further prosecution of the Vietnam war, opposition that may reach the stage of revulsion once the facts about the recently disclosed massacres” in Vietnam “sink in.” He declared “it would not be in Israel’s interest to have the Vietnam and Middle East situations linked in the public mind.”