New England and West Pa. Zionists Vote Confidence in Lipsky Administration

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

The New England Zionist region at an Executive Committee meeting lasting all day Sunday voted confidence in the leadership of Louis Lipsky and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, with ten members dissenting.

Morris Rothenberg, national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal Board of Directors, addressed the delegates who came from cities throughtout New England to discuss the present controversy in the Zionist Organization of America. Elihu D. Stone, president of the New England region and a member of the National Administrative Committee, presided.

Mr. Rothenberg charged that the opposition movement is being led by the group which was defeated at Cleveland.

He said that the issue which has now been made not only involves the question of whether the present administration should remain in power, but involves the honor of the Zionist movement because of what he believed to be unwarranted charges which have been made against it.

Mr. Rothenberg stated that it was no secret that most of the opposition group have been and are still hostile to the efforts for the enlargement of the Jewish Agency and it is most significant that at the recent Washington conference so important and historic a matter as the enlargement of the agency, which is just now on the order of the day and which will greatly affect the future work of Jewish development in Palestine, was ruled out of discussion. The inference is inescapable that the action of the opposition group at this time, which seemed to have been timed for Dr. Weizmann’s arrival even though drives for the U. P. A. were in progress, is animated, whether consciously or subconsciously, by hostility to the completion of the plan for the expansion of the Jewish Agency which is about to take place.

That the advance of money to the American Zion Commonwealth to help it meet its obligations, which was made upon the recommendation of one of the leaders of the present opposition, who acted as chairman of the finance committee of the United Palestine Appeal and that the relations of the Zionist Organization of America to the Zion Commonwealth, all of which was fully reported upon at the last Zionist convention in Atlantic City and acted upon by that convention, should now be dragged out again after a lapse of about two years and made the chief basis of the criticism of the oppositional group, shows how desperate the opposition is for material upon which to make its fight, Mr. Rothenberg said.

The leaders of the Washington opposition conference were assailed for what was termed an attempt to divert Zionist interests from the practical task.

The resolution expressing confidence in the Weizmann and Lipsky regime was adopted after spritied debate, indicating that the New England delegation to the Zionist convention in Pittsburgh will support the present administration.