Critic Calls Quaker Mideast Report ‘pro-arab Propaganda’

A critic of the Quaker report on the Middle East accused the American Friends Service Committee today of “moral bankruptcy with regard to the Arab-Israel conflict.” Dr. Arnold Soloway, author of a critical analysis of the document titled “Search for Peace in the Middle East,” prepared by the Quaker group last year, said he was convinced after nine months of fruitless negotiations that the Quaker report was a “propaganda effort on behalf of the Arabs that has serious anti-Jewish as well as anti-Israel implications.”

Soloway, addressing a meeting of the Youth Committee for Peace and Democracy in the Middle East, described an off-the-record meeting he had in Philadelphia last Sept. with Landrum R. Boiling, chief author of the Quaker report. He said Boiling requested his assistance and that of other critics in the event the Quakers decided to re-write their report but later informed him that they had decided not to re-write it.

“Their failure to offer an edited version of this material indicates their incapacity to answer our questions satisfactorily,” Soloway said. He demanded to know from the Quakers why they had circulated their then unpublished report to Congress at a time in 1970, when Israel was seeking to buy Phantom jets from the US. “Why does the report blame Jewish groups for polarization of attitudes in the West over the Arab-Israeli conflict without criticizing the far more extreme polarization in the East as a result of Arab and Soviet propaganda?” Soloway asked. He noted that the Quaker report made no mention of the 1967 Khartoum Pact in which the Arab states vowed no recognition, no negotiations and no peace with Israel.