A United States foreign policy that ignores the invasion of human rights abroad will ultimately endanger civil liberties here at home, Sen. Frank Church (D. Idaho) warned here at the Annual Dinner of the Jewish Community Relations Council. He told the more than 400 persons at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel that the U.S. government must use its foreign policy to aid the struggle of Soviet Jews “because we cannot resign from the human race and say that these problems are not our own.”
In accepting JCRC’s seventh annual Jules Cohen Memorial Award, the Senator issued a strong call for support of Israel — “not only because it is the proper moral thing to do but because it is in the best strategic interests of the U.S.” He added that the French release of Abu Daoud illustrates that “there is no redemption, no goodwill and no sense in selling our souls for Mid-East oil.”
Church said the terrorist’s release by France “will only expand the web of terrorism that has so far claimed the lives of Israeli athletes, the life of an American ambassador, and resulted in human tragedies that can only fan emotions in the Middle East.”
Church called on the Soviet Union to honor the pledges it made by signing the Helsinki Accord by allowing religious freedom and the free emigration of Soviet Jews. “Human rights must be interwoven with all other considerations. I define human rights in universal terms. We must recognize that human rights abroad, wherever they are in trouble, cannot be ignored, especially if they are to be protected at home.”
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.
