The 56th annual conference of the British Zionist Federation, which opened here last night, split into work sessions of constituent political parties today as each faction considered Zionist political developments here and abroad since the last convention.
At the inaugural session, the 1,000 delegates from Britain and Ireland heard Eliahu Elath, Israel Ambassador to the Court of St. James, warn that while Israel has been behaving with “great restraint and patience,” neither “our friends nor our enemies should interpret that patience as surrender or lack of determination. The concessions we have made so far,” the Ambassador continued, “have only strengthened our confidence in the justice of our cause, and have in no wise diminished my government’s resolute appreciation of precisely how far it can go without jeopardizing Israel’s vital interests.”
Tomorrow’s foreign policy statement in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is being awaited eagerly, the conference was told by Barnett Janner, Member of Parliament and President of the Federation. He will watch Mr. Macmillan’s statement, Mr. Janner said, “for evidence that Israel will not be pushed aside again.” Only such evidence, declared Mr. Janner, will furnish “the acid test of the comity of nations.”
Israel M. Sieff, honorary president of the Federation, made a plea for a broader base of financial assistance from British Jewry to Israel. He told the conference that only about 28,000 of Britain’s 100,000 Jews are contributing funds in aid to Israel, and declared that “there are obviously people who are escaping their responsibility.”
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