Social Breakdown in U.S. Menaces Jews, Gold Tells Ajcommittee Parley

Jews are menaced by the current breakdown of many of the rules of society by which most Americans have been willing to abide, Bertram H. Gold, executive vice-president of the American Jewish Committee warned here last night at a community-wide banquet of the AJCommittee’s Midwest regional advisory council conference. Much of the AJCommittee’s concern with the new emerging forms of potential and actual anti-Semitism, according to Mr. Gold, does not stem just from changes in social rules or norms but from the violence being employed to force change. This violence, which has total disregard for the rules which safeguard minorities, are a potential threat to the well-being of the Jewish community, he said. Mr. Gold observed that part of the threat stemmed from elements within the black revolution which closely align themselves with the “Third World” and pan-Arab forces and see Israel as an extension of American imperialism and American Jews as the “helpmates” of the Israelis. George E. Gruen, a Middle East specialist in the AJCommittee’s foreign affairs department, said the U.S. government has every reason to fear a nuclear confrontation with Soviet Russia over the Middle East. Nevertheless, he said, “the theme which we should continue to stress in the critical months ahead, is that the way to avoid a catastrophe is to make it clear to Moscow that Russia has as much to lose as we do–that we will not be intimidated.”