138. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Soviet Jewry; Jewish-Arab Contacts; Middle East Peace
PARTICIPANTS
- Nahum Goldmann, President, World Jewish Congress
- The Secretary of State
Dr. Goldmann said he wished to speak about four subjects:
Klutznick Visit to Egypt
He said that President Sadat had sent him a message, via Tito, asking that he appoint a representative of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) to come to Egypt to meet with Sadat and make preparations for the visit of a high-level Jewish delegation in the near future. Goldmann appointed Philip Klutznick, chairman of the WJC Board, who will take over from him this weekend as the Congress’ President. Klutznick had checked out the idea with both Begin and Dayan. Neither had any objection, but they had asked Klutznick to delay the visit for a few weeks, while “delicate negotiations” were in progress. Goldmann said he thought Klutznick should not delay and asked him to discuss the trip with Secretary Vance. If the Secretary agreed that Klutznick should not delay, Goldmann said he thought Klutznick should tell Dayan that, as an American citizen, he was heeding the advice of the Secretary of State and was proceeding to Egypt.
The Secretary said that Mr. Klutznick had not yet gotten in touch with him, but he would telephone him himself that afternoon and suggest that he make the trip soon.
Jewish-Arab Conference
Goldmann said that he had been trying for about a year to arrange a meeting of prominent Jewish and Arab intellectuals. There will be Israelis included on the Jewish side and Palestinians on the Arab side. The meeting would discuss Jewish-Arab relations: past, present, and future. Willy Brandt had agreed to try to arrange such a meeting, which is now tentatively scheduled for January 27–30, 1978 in Vienna. Sadat and Asad have been informed about the meeting by Brandt and [Page 730] Kreisky respectively, and have not posed any objections. Professor Yudovich of Princeton is drawing up a proposed list of Arab invitees. There will be about sixty participants on each side. On the Jewish side, participants will include Saul Bellow, Pierre Mendes-France, and probably Henry Kissinger (“as a Jewish intellectual, not as American diplomat,” Goldmann noted.) Goldmann described the meeting, if it comes off, as a “moral breakthrough.”
Cultural Rights of Soviet Jews
Goldmann noted that for many years he had fought with little success for rights of Soviet Jews to publish their own newspapers, books, etc. and to worship freely, which he considered as important as the right to emigrate. Goldmann was convinced that this was an ideological problem for the Russians, because the Jews do not fit into their Marxist construct for dealing with “the nationalities problem.” Willy Brandt volunteered to Goldmann to raise this issue with Brezhnev, with whom Brandt has carried on a private personal correspondence (in their own handwriting) for a number of years. Brandt asked Goldmann to prepare a memorandum on the problem which he said he would send to Brezhnev as his own.
Goldmann said that Brandt had indeed passed the message to Brezhnev and had learned that his query had been referred to chief ideologue Mikhail Suslov. Suslov had asked that Goldmann be informed that he was working on the problem and that it would take a long time to resolve. Ambassador Dobrynin confirmed to Goldmann last May that Suslov had the problem in hand.
Dobrynin is trying to arrange for Jewish delegation headed by Goldmann to visit the USSR. Goldmann said he had laid down several conditions, including visiting six specified cities to meet with their Jewish communities, and a meeting with a top Soviet leader, preferably Suslov. Dobrynin had also asked Goldmann for a memorandum on the Jewish cultural-rights problem which he said that he would submit directly to Brezhnev.
Middle East Peace Negotiations
Goldmann said the subject he most wanted to discuss with the Secretary was Middle East peace. He led off by stating his disillusionment with Rabbi Schindler, Chairman of the President’s Conference, who he said used to be more of a dove than he, but who has now sold out his principles because of his ambitions. Goldmann urged the Secretary not to pay too much attention to criticisms from the American Jewish community for whom he expressed great disapprobation. He recalled that American Jewry had strongly resisted the partition of Palestine in the early days, but later came to praise President Truman for supporting such a solution. He predicted that if the present efforts for peace [Page 731] through compromise bear fruit, the Jewish community will similarly praise President Carter. He added, however, that Israelis should not make major concessions for less than full peace, which he believes the Arabs were ready to accept. “The Jews are a very stubborn people. That is why they have survived,” he said, but they must often be forced to do what is in their own best interest. The Bible says that God brought the Jews out of Egypt “with a strong arm”, he said, because, as the Talmud notes, if He had not used “a strong arm”, the Jews would never have left their bondage in Egypt.
Goldmann said that he had asked Kissinger why he had not forced the Israelis to make essential compromises for peace, and Kissinger replied that it was because President Ford had lacked a majority in Congress. President Carter has that majority, Goldmann said, and “I believe he can succeed where Ford could not.” Goldmann said he feared we would drag out the peace process so long that a tragic war might break out.
The Secretary agreed that continued progress was essential if war was to be averted.
Goldmann said that he had received a message from one of Arafat’s personal emissaries with whom he met regularly, saying that if Israel remained rigid and refused to deal with the PLO even after it accepted Resolution 242, the United States should agree to hold parallel talks with the PLO while the Geneva talks are going on. Goldmann said he believed that if the United States threatened this, the Israelis might change their mind and deal with the PLO. Arafat had asked that Goldmann pass this idea along to the Secretary.
The Secretary said he believed that it is still possible to resolve the Palestinian participation issue. The key is assuring that the Palestinian question is solidly on the Geneva agenda. If it is, the PLO will probably be flexible on who should speak for the Palestinians in negotiations. The Israelis have now accepted the idea of discussing the West Bank and Gaza problems with joint working groups of Jordanians, Egyptians, and Palestinians.
Goldmann said that PLO representatives have told him that if the United States would agree to deal with the PLO, the PLO will amend its covenant. Before the meeting of the Palestine National Council in April, Goldmann said he had advised his PLO interlocutor that the Council should delegate to Arafat and the Executive Committee the authority to amend the charter at a propitious time, without referring it back to the PNC. Prior to the recent Damascus meeting, the PLO had already decided to accept Resolution 242 in exchange for a dialogue with the United States. But when Begin got the Knesset to say that Israel will not deal with the PLO even if it changed its Covenant, the PLO drew back from accepting 242.
[Page 732]Goldmann said that he was now writing an article for the January, 1978 issue of Foreign Affairs on the subject of “The (George) Ball Thesis from a Zionist Point of View”. Goldmann said that he regarded Israel’s current leadership as caricatures of the Zionist ideal. He described Begin as a “retarded child”, who is brilliant in some spheres and hopelessly backward in others. As an example of the latter, when a member of a group of American Jewish scholars recently asked Begin how Israel will cope with the prospects of an Arab majority in Israel if Israel annexed the West Bank, Begin said that two million Jews would immigrate to Israel to settle the area within a few years!
Referring to his meeting with the American Jewish leadership, the Secretary said that they were angry, but he hoped that he had corrected some inaccurate assumptions and misperceptions of fact.2 For example, they had believed that the Soviet-American statement had alienated the moderate Arabs, when in fact Egypt and Jordan had thanked us for issuing the statement, which they said had helped them greatly. We had also reassured the Jewish leaders that we would not use military and economic assistance as pressure against Israel.
Goldmann said he thought we might have gone too far in making such categorical assurances, since pressure would be needed in the future if peace was to be achieved.
- Source: Department of State, Office of the Secretariat Staff, Records of Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State, 1977–1980, Lot 84D241, Box 10, Vance Nodis Memcons 1977. Confidential; Exdis. Drafted by G. Kulick (NEA/IAI). The meeting took place in the Secretary’s office.↩
- No memorandum of conversation has been found.↩