Dr. Goldmann Wants Zionist Movement ”streamlined” Urges Abolition of ”shekel”

A call to ”streamline” the organizational structure of the Zionist movement and to abolish the ”shekel” as the electoral basis for the World Zionist Congresses was issued hore today by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency.

Dr. Goldmann also emphasized that ”the whole fund-raising machinery of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, as constituted today, requires reshaping in order to bring about a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of overlapping and jurisdictional overlapping.”

The chairman of the American section spoke at the concluding session of the mid-winter conference of Hadassah, which opened here on Monday to survey emergency problems connected with Hadassah activities in Israel. If the proposed reorganization of the Zionist movement is to prove effective, Dr. Goldmann said, the state of Israel must recognize the Zionist movement as representative of Jewry outside of Israel and give it the necessary status.

Dr. Goldmann cautioned those who saw the creation of Israel as the fulfillment of the Zionist program, and who thought this made the further existence of the movement unnecessary, to remember that although the state of Israel is functioning normally, ”these last 30-odd months have shown that it will take many more years and a tremendous effort on behalf of the Jewish people everywhere in the world to enable the state really to become consolidated and self-supporting.”

Israel’s foreign policy was reviewed at the Hadassah conference by Avraham Harman, Counsellor of the Israel Embassy. Stressing Israel’s independent and principled approach to international relations, Mr. Harman said: ”Israel’s independent policy at the U.N. General Assembly reflected itself in general support for measures to curb aggression, to strengthen the United Nations as an effective body and to strive for peace through conciliation.” He noted that Israel’s delegation at the United Nations ”has participated actively in the crucial discussions in the search for a Korean settlement and has made public its own plan to bring peace to the Far East.”