Speech #870010377

And it is rather strange that Senator FULBRIaHT. whilst admitting that the Egyptian ruler keeps declaring his intention to destroy Israel. at the same time expresses regret that the United States does not provide Egypt with military aid. It would have been more logical if the Senator had expressed his regret that the U.S.S.R. gives military aid to this ruler who makes declarations of this kind. Finally. a few words with regard to what the Senator had to say about the Arab refugees. He stated that there were over a million refugees. It is. however. well knownand anybody can verify this by examining the population statistics of the country before 1948that there were somewhat less than 500.000 Arabs in the area which is now Israel. In 1948 after Israel was established there were in Israel about 120.000 Arabs. We later admitted about 30.000 refugees on the basis of the reunification of families. If you deduct from the 500.000 (in fact there were less than 500.000 in our area before 1948) 120.000 which were then in Israel and again 30.000 which we admitted later. it is rather hard to arrive at the result that there are more than a million refugees. as the Senator maintains. On one important point the Senator did not lay sufficient emphasis though he mentions it by the way. namely. that the Arab rulers exploit the refugees as a political weapon in their endeavors to destroy Israel. This is perhaps the greatest crime that the Arab rulers are committing. this cruel exploitation of the refugees for whose being refugees they are themselves responsible and to blame. For the Arab rulers called upon these people to leave the country until such time as they would have invaded Israel and destroyed her. They could easily have prevented the suffering of the refugees just as we prevented the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries by making tremendous efforts. efforts beyond our possibilities. to take them in and to settle them. The Arab rulers could much more easily have settled the Arab refugees where they are. But these refugees are weapons in their hands in their fight against Israel. I am very sorry that a responsible public figure who heads the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate did not see his way to present the facts as they are. although we put these facts before him both in the United States and in the course of his visit here.