Consul-General Arthur Lourie of Israel tonight warned the Arab states that their refusal to sign final peace treaties with the Jewish state would militate against their best interests. His warning was sounded at the initial session of the 36th annual convention of Hadassah, which opened at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria and will continue through Wednesday. More than 2,000 delegates attending the convention also heard an address by Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.
“If, as appears to be the case,” Mr. Lourie said, “the Arabs are not prepared to make peace with us now, we can wait. If need be, we can wait a long time. But the Arab states should know that time is not necessarily in their favor, and that they may find themselves again limping behind the march of events.” He noted that “a year ago Israel was ready to accept the return of 100,000 Arab refugees as part of a comprehensive settlement. That offer was not even deemed worthy of an answer and lapsed through Arab refusal to discuss it when it was feasible. Today the proposal of the Israel Government is being overtaken by events. The land of Israel is filling up and terms which it was possible to offer a year ago are not now applicable to changed conditions.”
Turning to Israel’s support of the United Nations in Korea, Mr. Lourie said his country’s stand must be viewed against the background of “Israel’s position in relation to the conflict between the two world blocs,” which he said “has from the very beginning been exceptional.” He pointed out that israel had ties both with the Eastern and Western blocs. Israel, he said, was modeled after the Western democracies with which it had the strongest cultural and economic ties, particularly with the United States and American Jewry, whose assistance helped Israel to statehood and is still needed. At the same time he said, Israel owed a debt of gratitude to Eastern Europe for its support of partition and cannot do anything that would hamper the chances of Eastern European Jewry to go to Israel.
Frankly examining the much-discussed issue of world Jewry’s relationship to Israel, now a sovereign state, Mrs. Samuel Halprin, Hadassah president, said the Jewish Community is divided into the “galuth”–that part which lives in lands where Jews are in danger–and the diaspora, that part which enjoys freedom and equality in democratic countries. It is in the diaspora that Jews of the United States belong, she emphasized. When Israel declares that the exiles will be gathered in in three years, it is to the Jews of the galuth that Israel refers, Mrs. Halprin said.
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.
