1968_4_arabisraelwar

208 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1968
Times published an article on the Council. It said that some of the organization's
leaders looked upon the June war as an act of Israeli " 'aggression,'"
and upon the "massive Jewish support for Israel in America as amounting
to 'hysteria.' " Three days later the Times reported the repudiation of
this position by Donald S. Klopfer, vice chairman of Random House; Joseph
H. Louchheim, deputy commissioner in charge of the New York city division
of the State Department of Social Welfare; John Mosler, chairman of Mosler
Safe Company; Walter N. Rothschild, Jr., president of Abraham & Straus
department store, and Stanley Marcus, president of Neiman-Marcus company
in Dallas. They or their spokesmen emphasized their current sympathy
for Israel, backed up by substantial contributions to the Israel Emergency
Fund or other Israeli causes during or right after the fighting. Several announced
their intention of resigning from the Council; all others said they
were reviewing their membership.
The outpouring of contributions was accompanied by anecdotes, accounts,
tales about the givers. In Boston a woman about to enter the hospital for
major surgery wrote: "Here is my contribution. Give me some cards and I'll
make calls from my bed." The owner of two gas stations in New York
turned over to the UJA the deeds to the stations as his contribution to the
emergency fund. Other contributors donated the cash-surrender values of
their life-insurance policies. Another story reported at UJA headquarters
concerned a well-dressed man who almost timidly approached a clerk's desk
to say he was pledging another $100,000: "I am now going to give my
friends a talk. If the Israelis can give their blood, we can give what we have."
The day before he had contributed $100,000.
Jewish soldiers in Vietnam donated considerable amounts of money. There
were reports of virtually 100 per cent backing and admiration for the Israeli
army among the United States troops in Vietnam.
In the New York metropolitan area teen-age volunteers, with coin boxes
and shopping bags, solicited contributions at subway and bus-terminal entrances.
Four yeshivah students stood at Broadway and 42nd Street, holding
the corners of a bedsheet and soliciting funds: "There is no food being produced
in Israel. All able-bodied men are at the front. Give for medical supplies,
for food and shelter for the children.''
Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York offered to pay the salaries of doctors for
up to three months while they served in Israel. Eight doctors immediately
volunteered, but only one was able to leave before the war began. The hospital
paid the transportation of the Israeli nurses on staff who returned to Israel.
It helped obtain critically important medical equipment for Israel. Staff doctors
conducted a campaign among their colleagues, as did the medical social
workers, collecting many times the usual amounts.
There were numerous reports of people who cashed securities and insurance
policies so that they could give larger contributions. All over the country con-