Mizracht Leader Charges “certain Forces” in Israel Government Seek to Destroy Zionism

Leon Gellman, chairman of the World Mizrachi Executive, who arrived here last week from Israel, today blamed “certain forces within the present Israel Government who are directly or indirectly seeking to weaken, and perhaps even to destroy, the authority, power and influence of the World Zionist Movement. This policy has been developing ever since the establishment of the state of Israel,” he added.

The World Mizrachi leader said he believed “the attempts to deprive the Jewish Agency and the Zionist movement of all authority, power, and even activity in Israel, and the attempt to take all fund-raising activities out of the hands of loyal and stalwart Zionists and transfer them to non-Zionists and even anti-Zionists, and the constant wooing by the government of these non-Zionists and even anti-Zionists, are apparently part of a plan to achieve the complete disarmament of the world Zionist movement.”

Such a policy, he added, will only tend to “widen the breach between the state of Israel and Jews of the diaspora.” This, he stated, seems to be of “little concern to those responsible for this policy of alienating Zionists.” Mr. Gellman expressed the hope that the forthcoming plenary session of the Jewish Agency executive will face these problems and find some sort of working solution which, through the Zionist movement, will give the Jews of the diaspora more than a passive spectatorial interest in the state” and which will find means of arousing the enthusiasm of world Jewry towards the ingathering of exiles and more effective financial support of Israel.

Mr. Gellman insisted that “only a fully-mobilized and reinvigorated World Zionist movement, whose American membership alone numbers more than 700,000 can guarantee the success of the United Jewish Appeal, the Israel bond issue, private investment drives, and other fund-driving endeavors for the benefit of Israel.” He further added that “it is absolutely essential that the world Zionist movement become more deeply involved in the operation of Israel’s enormous immigration program, since ‘kibbutz galuyot’ is the age-long concern and duty of world Jewry.”