The New York port’s greetings to the infant port of Tel Aviv were brought last night to a rally celebrating the inauguration of passenger service at Tel Aviv by John McKenzie, Commissioner of Docks, speaking in the name of Mayor LaGuardia.
The Tel Aviv port is “the first step to national greatness,” Mr. McKenzie told more than 1,000 labor Zionists at a meeting in the Hotel Pennsylvania called by the American Committee for Nachshon, Palestine labor maritime corporation.
“Fear not the oppressors,” he said, “for when you have goods to deal with them and an independent state behind you, the rest of the world will respect you.”
A resolution was adopted calling upon the Jewish masses in America to increase their assistance to “the new branch of our reconstruction work,” the maritime industry, and calling for the “further upbuilding of the Tel Aviv port, the gate of a great mass-immigration into Jewish Palestine.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
