Peter Hermes, the West German Ambassador to the United States, met Tuesday with two members of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) and stressed that his country was concerned about the security of the State of Israel, but that “peace in the Middle East is also of utmost concern.”
Hermes met for about 15 minutes with AFSI member Tandi Gwen and AFSI local co-chairman Leo Samet after some 30 persons demonstrated outside the West German Embassy here protesting the proposed $5 billion arms safe by West Germany to Saudi Arabia. Gwen said the Ambassador told “us that the security of Israel is very important to them but that peace in the Middle East is also of utmost concern.”
“We pointed out that the two are inseparable,” Gwen told the JTA. The demonstration was organized jointly by the AFSI and the American Jewish Congress. Demonstrators carried placards declaring “German arms to kill Jews 1934-1984” and “No Jewish lives for Saudi petrodollars.”
TWO PROTESTORS ARRESTED, CHARGED
The AFSI also staged a peaceful sit-in Tuesday at the West German Consultate General in New York. Rabbi Avraham Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale told the JTA that after almost seven hours of the sit-in he and Father Bruce Bramleff, Rector of St. Marks Episcopal Church in Teaneck, N.J., were arrested and charged with criminal tresspass. They were held for an hour and then released and given summonses to appear in court March 1.
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.
