The Lebanese delegate to the world congress here of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions broke the calm of a session today by opening an attack on the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation and its representative here. His attack was replied to immediately by the Histadrut representative, Reuven Barkat.
The Lebanese delegate. B. Shuman, accused the Histadrut of maltreating Arab workers and launched a personal attack on Mr. Barkat accusing him of following an anti-Arab policy. He based his references on accusations made earlier by a Communist leader, Esther Wilenska. The delegate from the Lebanon also referred to the status of Arab refugees, saying that Israel had not only deprived them of their homes, but was inflicting great sufferings on them.
In his reply, Mr. Barkat said that it was regrettable that M Shuman’s statement was based on a Communist propaganda version of affairs in Israel aimed at spreading hatred and bitterness between Jewish and Arab workers through falsehood and misrepresentation. Histadrut’s policy from its very beginnings, he added, was to integrate Arab communities and to give them a full and equal opportunity. That program, he continued, was now almost completely implemented with the result that Israel’s Arab workers and farmers had a higher standard of living than that of their counterparts in any of the Arab states of the Middle East.
Turning to the refugee problem, the Histadrut spokesman asserted that it should not be forgotten that the responsibility for the tragic situation lies with the Arab states which in defiance of the United Nations resolution of 1947, opened aggressive warfare on the newborn democratic State of Israel. He added that the task of the Histadrut and the people of Israel was to achieve the full integration of the Arab working people into the labor community of Israel in order to build a basis for understanding and cooperation between democratic Israel and the workers of the Arab countries who had yet to achieve social emancipation.
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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.
