Uzi Narkiss, director of the Jewish Agency’s aliya department, criticized the Zionist Organization of Canada last night for setting up a committee to hold hearings in Israel on the problems of Canadian immigrants. The Jewish Agency rejected an invitation to send representatives to the inquiry which began here yesterday.
Narkiss told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the ZOC should have coordinated its action in advance with the Jewish Agency, not presented the Agency with a fait accompli. Gerald N.F. Charness, chairman of the ZOC group, told reporters yesterday that the organization had in fact notified the Jewish Agency of the intended inquiry when the decision to hold it was made after the ZOC’s 41st convention in Jerusalem last year.
Narkiss pointed out that two inquiries are presently underway on various aspects of immigration and absorption–a committee headed by Amos Horev, president of Technion, which was appointed by the government and the Jewish Agency, and a committee headed by a Harvard professor which was also appointed by the Agency. Narkiss observed that the ZOC was “actually a political party similar to the ZOA” (Zionist Organization of America) in the United States.
He stressed that it was not the Canadian Zionist Federation which embodies all Zionist movements in Canada and wondered if other Canadian Zionist groups proposed setting up investigatory committees and demand Jewish Agency participation. Sol Granik, a long-time Canadian Zionist leader and presently the representative of the United Israel Appeal of Canada in Israel, disputed Narkiss’ intimation that the ZOC’s inquiry was politically motivated. He said its chairman, Rabbi David Monson, is affiliated with the World Confederation of General Zionists while most of its officers belong to the World Union of General Zionists. Officially, the ZOC is affiliated with neither group, Granik said.
He said he did not believe the purpose of the inequity was to make political capital or to snipe at the Jewish Agency and he thought the ZOC inquiry could be helpful.
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.
