Representatives of Argentina’s leading political parties joined last-night in an appeal to Israel and the Arab states to convert their armistice agreements into a peace settlement in the interests of their countries and of humanity in general. Copies of the appeal, concurred in by speakers at a mass rally organized by the Argentine Zionist Central Council, were sent to all embassies in Buenos Aires and to the United Nations.
Previously the signatories, all leading non Jews, had addressed some 3,000 persons who gathered to indicate their desire that the armistice pacts be converted into peace settlements, and had told them that Israel had no intention of making war and every desire to make peace.
Dr. Oscar Lopez Serrot, a leader of the Radical Party and a member of the National Consultative Board, Argentine’s provisional government, said that the political leaders, as representatives of the Argentine people, have come here to express our solidarity with Israel’s desire for peace.” He noted that many Argentine Jewish youths were participating in Israel’s national development and that some of them had died in defense of the Jewish State.
Dr. Miguel Angel Zavala Ortiz, Radical Union leader and also a member of the National Consultative Board, said that Israel was an “oasis of freedom” in its part of the world and scored Arab attempts to label Israel “imperialist” and “expansionist.” He declared that the Jews were the greatest victims of persecution and “our scapegoat for many generations,” and praised the Jewish people’s conversion of Israel’s desert into a garden.
Another member of the provisional government, Christian Democratic leader Dr. Rudolfo Martinez warned against attempts by the Western Powers to appease the Arabs at Israel’s expense. He expressed the opinion that if Israel did not find peace soon, it would be converted into an “anti-Western fortress.”
Socialist leader Dr. Sanchez Viamonte stressed the fundamentally democratic character of the Israel people and insisted that Israel was too busy building a new society to want anything but peace from the Arabs. He urged the United Nations, “in order to deserve the world’s respect,” to act “firmly to establish peace on the basis of the armistice agreements.”
Dr. Enrique Grande, a leading light in the Progressive Democratic Party, protested the endangering of Israel’s security by “Arab ambitions which could be better satisfied by raising their own standards.” He demanded, in the name of the Argentine people, that the Suez Canal be opened to the shipping of all the world, including Israel.
Dr. Isaac Goldenberg, chairman of the Zionist Central Council and chief figure in the organization of the rally, whose demand for conversion of the armistice into a peace was echoed by the major Argentine newspapers, asserted that Israel cannot return to the borders set out for it in 1947 by the UN partition plan. He quoted Israel Premier David Ben Gurion to the effect that this is as “impossible as reviving our dead.”
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.
