— Jewish leaders denounced the planned sale of the weapons to Saudi Arabia. Howard Squadron, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the arms package “will be damaging to our country’s interests, harmful to the cause of Middle East peace and dangerous for our country’s friend and ally, Israel.”
Squadron said a Presidents Conference delegation will meet tomorrow with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger at the State Department. Squadron added that he will hold a news conference after the meeting.
Rabbi Joseph Sternstein, president of the American Zionist Federation, said the Administration’s decision on the arms sale is “ill-conceived and injurious to America’s own vital strategic interests” and “raises many disturbing and disquieting issues…Are we to assume that the decisions for America’s strategic interests are to be made in Riyadh….Is this the way the United States punishes such a stalwart friend such as Israel and rewards such an arrogant and unbending element such as Saudi Arabia?” Sternstein urged the Jewish community to “mobilize its full resources to oppose” the arms sale.
Rabbi William Berkowitz, president of the Jewish National Fund, charged that the sale of arms would be “catastrophic for the United States, for Israel and for the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East.” Noting that there is nothing “moderate” about the Saudi vow to destroy Israel, he emphasized that “the sale of such weapons would only put them into the hands of a regime that could prove to be as unstable as Iran. When will our country learn the lesson that all the arms we provide the Saudis will not save Prince Fahd anymore than the American arms saved the throne of the Shah of Iran?”
Rabbi Sol Roth, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, said that sermons on the last days of Passover in more than 1,000 Orthodox congregations will emphasize the danger to the U.S. if the Administration ignores all opposition to the arms sale. He also announced that many Orthodox congregations would make petitions available to be signed and sent to the White House, State Department and Congress. The petitions would declare that “Saudi Arabia can not be trusted to be an ally of the U.S. now or in the future.”
The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the association of Reform rabbis, said the proposed arms sale was “unnecessary” and was being proposed “without achieving Saudi acceptance of Israel and a firm guarantee to join in the Camp David peace process.”
The CCAR also asserted that the projected sale “will only serve to fuel the arms race and antagonisms in the Middle East, further destabilizing the region and acting in the worst interests of the United States and our allies.” It asked the Reagan Administration to withdraw its planned weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, and if formal notification was sent to Congress, “we call upon Congress to vote against” the proposal.
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.
