Young Rapped for Urging Jews to Repent for Israel’s Policies Toward the Palestinians

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University here, has termed as “repugnant” statements by Andrew Young that American Jews should repent during the High Holy Days period for Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

Hier was referring to statements made by Young, who officially stepped down as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Sunday to a Los Angeles Times reporter during his flight back from a tour of Africa. The interview was in Sunday’s edition.

Young was quoted as saying that he thought “it would be appropriate” for American Jews during the 10 Days of Penitence to question whether Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, “in the bombing of Lebanon, in the extension of property rights on the West Bank, are consistent with the heritage of Rosh Hashonah.” (Young repeated some of these remarks to a New York television reporter last night.)

The former Ambassador prefaced his remarks by saying the American Jewish community has “an important even dominant influence” on the moral tone of this country.

“The last person who should be giving advice to a religious community on its holiest of days on how and what to repent is the individual who was forced to resign his trusted post because he lied to the President and Secretary of State,” Hier declared Young resigned as UN Ambassador after misinforming the State Department on his unauthorized meeting in July with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s observer at the UN.

A MORE APPROPRIATE TOPIC

Hier, who is also a member of the Advisory Committee to President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, took exception to Young’s implication “that American Jews control the decision-making process of a freely-elected democratic government halfway around the world. Andrew Young should know better.”

“A more appropriate topic for introspection would be for Black leadership to consider how the disciples of Martin Luther King, Jr., the father of the American non-violent movement, find themselves wed to the godfathers of world terrorism,” Hier added.

Young said in his Los Angeles Times interview that although the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had sung “We Shall Overcome” with PLO leader Yasir Arafat during their recent visit to Beirut, they had first urged Arafat to give up the use of violence against Israel.