Ben-gurion Meets with Leaders of American Jewish Organizations

American Jewish leaders were told here today by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that Israel expects to face difficulties in the near future because of the complex world political situation. He spoke at a joint meeting of the Jewish Agency executive and the American Zionist Council which is the coordinating body of all Zionist groups in the United States.

The Prime Minister spent several hours in the building of the Jewish Agency here which houses numerous Jewish organizations. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, greeted Mr. Ben-Gurion with great cordiality when the Prime Minister arrived in the building. He took Mr. Ben-Gurion and his party to the 13th floor penthouse atop the structure. With Mr. Ben-Gurion’s official party were Avraham Harman, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, and Binyamin Eliav, Israel’s Consul-General in New York.

After Dr. Goldmann had alluded good-naturedly to the controversy about who is a Zionist, the Premier said: “I have had one concept of Zionism since I was a child, and I hold to that concept. I live in a free country, as you do, and both have the right of free speech.” Dr. Goldmann and Rabbi Irving Miller, president of the American Zionist Council, then presented the Premier to other Agency and Zionist leaders, Rabbi Miller explaining that the Council embraced representatives of 750,000 Zionists in the United States.

Mr. Ben-Gurion was later led by Label Katz, national president of B’nai B’rith and chairman of the Presidents’ Conference, to another floor in the building for a meeting with all of the presidents of the 18 major national Jewish organizations affiliated with the Presidents’ Conference. At the meeting Mr. Ben-Gurion complimented the Presidents’ Conference on having been able to assemble in-one organization leaders of so many important Jewish organizations, Zionist and non-Zionist, representing all religious trends in Jewish life. Mr. Ben-Gurion spoke of the need for Jewish unity and told the group that there was need for unity not only among Jews but among all of the nations in the free world.

Mr. Ben-Gurion spoke at length about the Arab refugee problem. He pointed out that since 1948, 500,000 Jews from Arab countries have settled in Israel, and declared that the half million Arab refugees could be absorbed by the Arab countries surrounding Israel. Israel, he said, is concerned for the welfare of the 240,000 Arabs residing in Israel “as human beings,” while the refugees are being used by the countries where they are now as “a political weapon.”

The Israel Prime Minister later received a delegation of top leaders of the American-Jewish Committee at his suite in the Waldorf Tower. In the afternoon he attended a reception given for him at the Waldorf Astoria where he met many other Jewish leaders and representatives of Jewish organizations from all over the country.

Earlier he discussed American Jewish problems with a delegation of the American Labor Zionist movement at his suite. Mr. Ben-Gurion also visited the Histadrut House today where, speaking in Yiddish, he reiterated his view that Zionism means immigration to Israel.

Among Mr. Ben-Gurion’s visitors this evening was Lessing J. Rosenwald, one of the founders and prime movers of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Mr. Rosenwald had asked Mr. Ben-Gurion to see him. They met previously, the last time in Israel where Mr. Rosenwald was visiting.