American Zionist Laborite Assembly Asks for U.S. Cooperation with Israel

The cooperation of the United Nations Sited States with Israel in achieving peace, political stability and a progressive economic outlook in the Middle East was urged in a declaration adopted here last night at the closing session of the first National Assembly for Labor Israel. The statement also suggested the establishment, with U.N, support, of a Middle East regional plan for economic development.

“The declaration emphasized that the aim of bringing to Israel all Jews who desire to go there remains the responsibility of the entire Jewish people and “the” ?age task of providing the necessary finances and skills” is a “‘Joint responsibility” of Israel and Jewry in other countries. It also called for the maintenance of close cultural ties between the Jews of this country and Israel so that each section of the Jewish people could gala the best parts of the development of the other.

It was carefully pointed out, in the declaration, that the establishment of Israel “clearly marks a difference in obligations and rights” between Jews who are Israeli citizens and those who hold citizenship elsewhere. “The latter obviously can have no responsibility for or to the laws of Israel,” the statement insisted, adding fiat “at the same time we are vitally concerned with the character and quality of Israeli society and culture.”

Asserting that “the importance of labor Zionism in determining the social d economic character of Israel” is outstanding,” the declaration said that the present government of Israel, under Mapai leadership, plans to enact many principles of social welfare. It also maintained that a great voluntary mobilization of Israeli Israel labor is necessary to colonize waste areas and absorb the immigrants into the “cooperative economic structure of Israel.” To aid this effort, the statement called or to “manpower and skill of Jewry in the free democracies” and American Jewry, with to aid of the American Government, to carry out in Israel a “practical Implementation of President Truman’s Bold New Program.”

Finally, the declaration stressed that “Israel needs capital investment urgently in order to absorb the rapid flow of immigration, and the present Israeli Government, with Mapai’s leadership, plans o provide condition calculated to encourage private investors.”

BROADENING CAPITALIST BASE IN ISRAEL MAY BE NECESSARY, GREENBERG SAYS

Additional emphasis was laid on this point by Hayim Greenberg, Labor member of the American section of the Jewish Agency executive, one of the major speakers at the final session. Reaffirming his personal belief in a socialist economy, Mr. Greenberg said that the people of Israel should reconcile themselves to the capitalist base of Israel’s economy. He asserted that the creation of ?polimate climate and legal framework for the constructive operation of private, ?it-seeking capital” might be needed if the United States and the not make available large sums for the economic development of Israel.

Mr. Greenberg also cautioned Israel against permitting the Army to exercise ## fluence in the civilian affairs of the country. He cited two recent examples of censorship in which the Army prohibited the publication of a poem in a newspaper ?stioning the government, and forced revisions in a Habimah script.

Aubrey S. Eban, Israeli permanent delegate at the U.N., outlined a three-? Program for settlement of the Arab refugee issue without imposing “unendurable ? on Israeli’s delicate economic and security position. ” He suggested that the ## problem be set against the rehabilitative background of the Near East, and that since the Arab states created the problem they be asked to take the preponderant share of its solution.