Jewish Doves See Need to Criticize Israel

Dovish members of the international Jewish community agreed here Wednesday that there is a need to speak out against Israeli policy in dealing with the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories.

They took this position at a private conference on the Israeli-Palestinian problem set up by the Middle East Dialogues, a Dutch foundation. The session, which ends today, is being attended by Palestinians as well as Israelis.

Drora Kass, director of the New York office of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, was a member of the American Jewish delegation that met last December in Stockholm with leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization. She recalled the criticism she received at the time from fellow American Jews, but she said the meeting may have encouraged PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to take a more moderate line in a speech to a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly later that month in Geneva.

Many Questions

Other American Jews, she said, raised such questions as “How can you talk to murderers?” and “Whom do you represent?” But the most frequently asked question, she said, was “Is the PLO really sincere?”

Kass said she believes that concerned Jews have not only a right but also a duty to speak out for peace in the occupied territories--the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip.

And she argued that American Jews should articulate their disagreement with Israel’s tactics in suppressing the nearly 14-month-old Palestinian uprising. Otherwise, she said, Israeli leaders will not get an accurate impression of the anti-violence sentiments held by most American Jews.

Kass said it was the failure of American Jews to object to Israeli policy, out of what she called a misguided desire to maintain Jewish unity, that led Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to say on returning from visiting the United States that “all American Jews are behind me.”

Henneke Gelderblom, a Dutch senator, said she believes that PLO leaders crossed a “psychological barrier” in accepting Israel’s right to exist as a state.

“The Jews should do it as well,” she said.

David Susskind, a leader of the Jewish community in Belgium, said: “You cannot be a free people when you rule other people. I feel very unhappy, very guilty in the name of my people, when we have to kill other people.”

Marie-Claire Mendes-France, French chairman of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, urged Shamir to meet with Arafat to seek a permanent solution.

“The chance for peace must be seized now,” she said.

Most speakers indicated that they are in favor of an independent Palestinian state as the only realistic way to a lasting peace.

U.S. policy in the Middle East came under fire from a retired American diplomat, Richard Parker. A former ambassador to Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco, Parker told the conference that in order to be effective, the United States will have to accept the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

Disagrees With Shultz

He said that former Secretary of State George P. Shultz was wrong in supporting the Israeli government’s view that there is no room for an independent Palestine in the occupied territories.

U.S. diplomacy under Shultz, Parker said, “kept talking about self-determination for the Palestinians, but would then tell the Palestinians that it did not mean the right to an independent state.”

“What the hell does it mean?” Parker asked.

He warned the Palestinians to avoid making “extreme remarks” in their current diplomatic offensive.

“You will be held to very high standards,” he said, and he cautioned that the American Establishment is “full of people who do not wish you well.”