American Ambassador to Tel Aviv Presents Credentials to Weizmann at Formal Ceremony

James G. McDonald, American Ambassador to Israel, today presented his credentials to Israeli President Weizmann in the first formal ceremony of its kind in the history of the young Jewish state. Previously, the Soviet Minister to Tel Aviv, Pavel Yershov, presented his credentials to Premier David Ben Gurion, in the absence of the President.

The Ambassador was escorted from the embassy to Hakirya, the seat of the government, in President Weizmann’s state car escorted by a squad of army and police motorcyclists. The ambassadorial party, whose vehicles were decorated with Stars and Stripes and red-white-and-blue streamers, was received at the government offices by a hand playing the Star Spangled Banner. After the 20 minute formal ceremony, refreshments were served.

Presenting his credentials, McDonald told the Israeli President ‘that this occasion marks another stage in the development of relations between the two nations which “from the beginning have been based on friendship and cooperation.” He stressed the “sympathetic desire” of the U.S. Government to “aid the advancement of the goal set for Israel–a free people securely at peace with its Arab neighbors and cooperating with them to obtain the common good gifts of modern science, industry and agriculture.”

President Weizmann, in response, said that MacDonald’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Israel vas further proof of the sympathetic and constructive interest which the President and the Government of the United States have taken in Israel ever since it came into being. Recalling the warm support by the United States of the U.N. General Assembly’s Palestine partition resolution, Weizmann also noted President Truman’s efforts in behalf of displaced persons and said that “it is a matter of deep gratification that Israel has been able to absorb, within a short period, more than the 100,000 persons for whom Truman pleaded.”