Dr. Nahum Goldmann said here today that the Zionist movement, far from having fulfilled its mission, “has at best reached half-way to its goal, and maybe less.” He defined that goal as mobilization of the support of world Jewry for Israel and furthering of large-scale immigration by Jews from the free nations who would go to Israel not because of necessity or persecution but for idealistic reasons.
Dr. Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress and former president of the World Zionist Organization, was principal speaker at the annual dinner of the Zionist Organization of America attended by about 1,000. He was presented with the ZOA’s Theodor Herzl Award, highest honor bestowed by that organization. He received a message of greetings from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who offered congratulations and called the award “a fitting symbol of a career of magnificent achievement in the cause of Jewish freedom.”
Dr. Goldmann said that so long as the Arab states refuse to recognize Israel’s existence, “Israel will…have to prepare to fight if necessary and certainly (must) remain armed and strong in order to deter Arab aggression. This will require super-human efforts…which, without the full solidarity of the Jewish world community, it will be unable to sustain.”
He said that “even if one does not negate the Diaspora as a form of life in Jewish history…the actual situation wherein only a minority lives in its own country endangers the future of the survival of the State.” According to Dr. Goldmann, “the greatest reservoirs of those who needed to come to Israel to start a new life have been more or less exhausted. Future aliyah has to come from the free countries as a voluntary immigration.”
Dr. Goldmann said that for the solution of the two central problems of Israel’s future – security and immigration – “a strong Zionist movement dedicated primarily to the mobilization of the Jewish Diaspora around Israel, to its unconditional solidarity with Israel, is absolutely essential.”
Earlier, Jacques Torczyner, ZOA president, told the organization’s national executive committee that the Zionist movement must develop an educational program on American campuses to help Jewish youth combat growing Arab propaganda activities. He said there were about 400,000 Jewish students on American college and university campuses but “unfortunately, a large number…are not prepared to counteract this propaganda, and their ignorance and lack of interest in Israel is too often the reason for the impact made by Arab propaganda.
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.
