Ambassador Harman Stresses Role of U.S. Jewish Aid to World Jewry

The United States played an “unparalleled” role in aiding the world to recover from the ravages of World War II, and the American Jewish community met a similar challenge through the United Jewish Appeal, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S.A., Avraham Harman, told 400 Jewish leaders assembled here this weekend.

Ambassador Harman and Joseph Meyerhoff, honorary chairman of the UJA, were the principal speakers at the Southeast Regional Conference of the UJA, attended by key Jewish leaders from eight states. The leaders approved the objectives and goals of this year’s UJA campaign to raise $109,000,000 nationally in 1965. The region’s goals were spelled out by the two conference co-chairmen, Milton Weinstein, of this city, and James L. Permutt, of Birmingham, Ala.

“I believe that the central role of the United States in the recent history of mankind,” Ambassador Harman declared, “is the entirely unparalleled way in which it took a world ravaged by war and poured in vast resources of money and technical assistance. As a result, in a very short period, it brought into existence great and growing centers of strength for the free world.” The American Jewish community, through the United Jewish Appeal,” he said, “has accomplished a similar achievement for all the Jewish people.”

“I stand before you,” he told the gathering, “as the representative of a free Jewish State in Israel with a population of 2,500,000 people living in freedom, who have opened the doors of their country, and will continue to keep their doors open, to every Jew in the world who needs freedom and who seeks it in our midst. We could not have become this, had it not been for the Jewish community of America. We could not have become this, had it not been for the United Jewish Appeal.”