Zionist Groups Put Up Joint Congress Slate

A joint slate of 150 candidates for delegates to the World Zionist Congress in Lucerne has been agreed upon by the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah and the Order Sons of Zion, it was announced yesterday by Morris Rothenberg, president of the Z.O.A.

The slate will appear on the official ballot as Ticket Number 1. Elections will be held throughout the country on June 23, polls having been set up in all the principal cities. The World Congress will open in Switzerland on August 20.

In making the announcement, Mr. Rothenberg issued a statement attacking Party Zionism in which he said the Congress “will focus its attention on Zionist problems at one of the most decisive stages in the development of Palestine.”

WILL BE SEVERE TEST

“With all of Palestine’s remarkable achievements in the past year, with the beginning of an era of mass immigration, the Homeland is on the threshold of a period of activity that will constitute one of the severest tests of world Jewry’s responsibility,” Mr. Rothenberg said.

“There are many who will consider the extraordinary strides of Palestine’s economic progress the peak of its reconstruction, but these persons fail to take cognizance of the elementary fact that an increase in Palestine’s population and economic activity continually create greater opportunities for expansion and immigration. Although Palestine is a small country, it still has large tracts of land that can be made available to hundreds of thousands of Jews, to provide a home for the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe who have been caught in the vise of economic discrimination and political persecution.

UNITED LEADERSHIP NEEDED

“The present World Zionist situation requires above all things a program based on a policy of a unified leadership unhampered by party differences and inter-group dissensions.

“The fundamental differences between the General Zionist Ticket No. 1 and the Tickets of the other parties such as Labor and the Mizrachi, can best be summed up by the phrase that has become the slogan of the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah and the Order Sons of Zion in their joint effort to elect the General Zionist majority delegation to the World Congress. That phrase is ‘Palestine Above Parties.’

“General Zionism represents an unshakable allegiance to the Basle Program which brooks no detour from the basic principles of the movement to rebuild Palestine as the Jewish National Home. We do not challenge the sincerity of those Zionists who are affiliated with special labelled parties. But it is a well-known fact that one that will be admitted generally that party Zionism in its very nature involves separatist loyalties that sooner or later must break out into open conflict. Party Zionism means dual allegiances which result in obscuring of a Palestine serving the entire Jewish People and a dissipation of energies in disputes that have only incidental relevance to the mainspring of Zionist effort.”