Meyer Weisgal, Chancellor of the Weizmann Institute of Science and the man who was a close confidant of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, issued an urgent call today to “the government, the Jewish Agency, banks, other institutions and individuals” in Israel and abroad to raise a $10 million fund for what he called an “Operation Truth.” He described it as a massive information campaign to enlighten world public opinion as to the truths of the Israel-Arab conflict and the tenets of Zionism.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post in praise of a letter it published from Jerusalem Catholic Pastor Claude Duvernoy, Weisgal said: “A public committee of propaganda experts drawn from Israel and elsewhere, both Jews and non-Jews, should be set up as a body independent of the government…to direct the enlightenment programs. The eyes of the world must be opened once and for all to the brazen lies of the. Arab propagandists and their cohorts inside and outside the UN.”
Weisgal contended that the government and Jewish Agency had been “remiss” in their duty “by not methodically revealing Arab mendacity and prevarications. Jews are the best public relations men for other peoples’ causes but “fail to live up to that reputation for themselves.” Weisgal claimed. He said he would be ready to give $10.000 personally to such a fund should it be set up.
BASIC FACTS TO BE EMPHASIZED
According to Weisgal, the basic facts to be emphasized are: The unbroken Jewish link with and presence in Palestine which itself was never an independent or separate entity since the expulsion of the Jews; that most “Palestinian” Arabs in fact live today in historic Palestine on either side of the Jordan. And the fact that many of them came to this country from other Arab areas because they were attracted by the prosperity that Jewish resettlement engendered; that the PLO’s “secular democratic state” notion is “manifestly spurious” without basis in history and “has been manufactured out of the intrigues of Arab oil diplomacy.”
Pastor Duvernoy’s letter to the Jerusalem Post, which stressed these points ought to be run as an advertisement in every leading newspaper in the West, Weisgal recommended. In Israel, too, “the young generation–and I say this more in sorrow than in anger–are being fed with lies, fraud, distortions and obfuscations of the historical truths of this area,” Weisgal claimed.
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.
