Jewish Groups Seek
Middle Ground On Crisis
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aueradua* to Diamond arad202 O &valuation
merican Jewish
organizations walked
a thin line this week.
They sought to maintain a
low profile over the Persian
Gulf crisis while trying to
counter attempts to link
Iraq's occupation of Kuwait
with Israel's presence in its
territories.
Agency fax machines
churned out a steady stream
of memos detailing recom-
mended "talking points"
that staff members and
other Jewish community
leaders might rely upon
when questioned about the
crisis by members of the
media and general public.
"We're attempting to be
low-key but not invisible,"
said David Harris of the
American Jewish Com-
mittee's Washington, D.C.,
office. "We don't want to be
front and center, but nee-
dless to say there is a kind of
infinite curiosity about all
this."
Martin Raffel, Israel Task
Force director for the Na-
tional Jewish Community
Relations Advisory Council,
said from New York that his
organization had
"encouraged member agen-
cies to differentiate between
its public and private re-
sponses" to inquiries about
the crisis.
"Publicly, it's maintain a
low profile," he explained.
"Privately, it's share the in-
formation on a discreet basis
with Jewish and non-Jewish
community leaders."
Mr. Harris, of the Ameri-
can Jewish Committee, said
his office was sending out
new memos every couple of
days "or as warranted." In
addition to rejecting the at-
tempt to link the Iraqi inva-
sion with Israel's situation,
Mr. Harris said the AJC was
emphasizing in its memos
Israel's continued strategic
importance to the United
States.
For organizations that
have been strongly iden-
tified with either the right or
left in relation to Israel and
its territories, the Gulf crisis
also represented a window of
opportunity or a time for
reassessing past positions.
Americans for Peace Now,
which has advocated Israel's
relinquishing of the ter-
Ira Rifkin is an assistant
editor at our sister newspaper,
the Baltimore Jewish Times.
ritories, altered its position
to include the stationing of
Israeli military personnel in
a Palestinian state, should
one emerge from any future
negotiating process.
The new position was ar-
ticulated in an internal
memo issued by the organ-
ization's national office in
New York this week and
sent to Peace Now board
members.
The statement also voiced
disappointment of the wide-
spread support Iraq has
received during the Gulf
crisis from West Bank
Arabs. That support, coupled
with Iraqi's military actions
and threats, said the memo,
has "underlined the critical
importance of Israel's right
to maintain a deterrent force
in key positions in a
demilitarized Palestinian
entity."
Over on the right, mean-
while, members of the
Zionist Organization of
America felt the Iraqi inva-
sion has presented the group
with an opportunity to con-
vince more American Jews
of the correctness of ZOA's
hardline approach toward
solving Israel'S problems. ❑
War Criminal
Is Indicted
New York (JTA) — Accus-
ed Nazi war criminal Josef
Schwammberger was in-
dicted this week in a court in
Stuttgart, West Gerrriany,
on charges of murdering "at
least 50 Jews" during World
War II.
He also was charged as an
accessory to the murder of at
least 3,377 other people, ac-
cording to the World Jewish
Congress, which learned of
the indictment from the
Jewish community of West
Berlin.
Mr. Schwammberger ad-
mitted to ordering the exec-
ution of one person under
"special circumstances," but
other than that, "he has
completely denied his
crimes," according to
Helmut Kronbacher,
spokesman for the pros-
ecutor's office.
Mr. Schwammberger, 78,
who is being held at the
Stammheim maximum
security prison, was
extradited from Argentina
in May, after a long pro-
ceeding that included his
hospitalization in an Argen-
tine hospital for a
mysterious coma.