Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, is “confident” that the United Nations General Assembly, which opens tomorrow, “will do all in its power to see to it that Israel enjoys equal rights am privileges that other members of the United Nations enjoy in shipping and trade through the Suez Canal.”
Mrs. Meir made that statement in addressing the 45th annual convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, which is meeting here.
Scoring the United Arab Republic, in her address last night, for failure to live up to its obligations to keep the Suez Canal free as an international waterway, Mrs. Meir declared: “The canal should be free and open for all–and we think we are part of that all “
The Israeli Foreign Minister also expressed the hope that “friendly European governments” will permit all Jews who wish to be reunited be reunited with their families “to emigrate to Israel. Israel, she declared, is making preparations to receive an immigration of “large numbers, ” adding that, while Israel needs large immigration, “large numbers of Jews need Israel. “
The only solution of the Arab refugee problem in the Middle East is the resettlement of the refugees in the lands where they now live, the convention was told by Mrs. Rose Halprin, former national president of Hadassah and acting chairman of the Jewish Agency executive.
“It is our hope,” said Mrs. Halprin, “that perhaps, somewhere in the Arab world, there will be found leaders who, knowing what they know, will have the courage to say to their people: ‘We will let you go; we know we cannot keep you living in degradation’ “
Mrs. Halprin pointed out that 50 percent of the so-called Arab refugees “never saw Israel, were not born there, did not come out of Israel.”
Dr. Miriam K. Freund. national president of Hadassah. told the delegates that there “must be no Zionist interference” in the political structure of Israel. The primary objective of the Zionist movement, she declared “is to assure the survival of Jewry by strengthening every phase of Jewish cultural and spiritual life.”
Mrs. Mortimer Jacobson, national chairman of Hadassah’s Zionist Affairs Committee, condemned President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic for interfering with freedom of shipping through the Suez Canal, and declared “the time has come for the society of nations to express their condemnation of Nasser’s tactics. “
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.
