Benjamin Freedman's 1961 Speech At The Willard Hotel

Read Transcript Here: https://archive.org/details/transcript-speech-of-benjamin-freedman-willard-hotel-washington-dc-1961_202312/

Benjamin Harrison Freedman (1890 – May 1984) was an American business man, and vocal anti-Zionist. Born in a Jewish family, he converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. Outside of political activism, Freedman was a partner in a dermatological institute and investor for small businesses.

Freedman was, from 1925 to 1937, a partner with Samuel D. Leidesdorf and the John H. Woodbury Laboratories, a dermatological institute and a derivative company of the old Woodbury Soap Company. Benjamin H Freedman was listed on the letterhead of the Institute for Arab American Affairs and around 1946, along with his wife, listed as "R M Schoendorf" (Rose M. Schoendorf Freedman), "sponsored a series of advertisements under the imprint of 'The League for Peace with Justice in Palestine'"

In 1988, the Institute for Historical Review, published Robert John's Behind the Balfour Declaration, including a single acknowledgment, to Freedman. John wrote that Freedman "gave me copies of materials on the Balfour Declaration which I might never have found on my own and (he) encouraged my own research."

He was a financial backer of the author Conde McGinley, publisher of the Anti- Zionist periodical Common Sense. In the 1955 libel trial by Rabbi Joachim Prinz against McGinley, Freedman testified that "he [Freedman] had given Mr. McGinley financial support of 'more than $10,000 but less than $100,000'". Prinz had sued McGinley for calling him a "red rabbi."

At the Henry George School, Benjamin Freedman spoke on "The Genesis of Middle East Tensions". Long John Nebel reported on WNBC that Freedman would discuss anti-Semitism. Freedman was politically active until the mid-1970s when he was well over 85 years old. He died in May 1984 at the age of 94.

Freedman, an apostate Jew, was well known to the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee as an active supporter of the Arab cause in the Middle East.