World Jewish Agencies Begin Series of Meetings in Jerusalem

The plenary session of the Jewish Agency Executive opened here this morning with immigration from the free world and plans for the utilization of the large numbers of volunteers arriving in Israel among the major items on the agenda.

The Agency Executive plenary, which is due to last most of this week, will be followed by a meeting of the governing council of the World Jewish Congress and a meeting of the Conference of World Jewish Organizations (COJO).

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization and of the World Jewish Congress, who is presiding at all three meetings, said today that the Zionist movement was facing great problems, particularly in taking up the prospect of a possible huge immigration, mainly of youth to Israel. He said there was an urgent need for a large-scale immigration to Israel campaign and that there was no organization for immigration besides the Jewish Agency. He expressed the hope that the plenary session would develop working plans for that objective.

Discussing the COJO and WJC meetings, he said that while unreserved Jewish support would be expressed for Israel, as well as a readiness to rally the Jewish people throughout the world politically for Israel, the meetings would also consider the situation of Jewish communities in Arab countries.

He said reports from those countries indicated an increasingly hostile atmosphere for Jews. The International Red Cross, seeking to be helpful, still had not been able to make contact with the Arab governments on the problem, he pointed out.

Dr. Goldmann said that the almost unexpected surge of mass Jewish support for Israel in recent weeks had revived his life-long vision of bringing all Jewish organizations throughout the world under one roof — not as an executive body but rather for discussions and consultations, where organizations from right to left, could discuss purely Jewish problems.