Exception was taken here today to a charge by Ibrahim Izzat, Egyptian newspaperman who made an incognito tour of Israel at the government’s invitation, that 98 percent of the Arabs in Israel “live in subhuman conditions.” Mr. Izzat made his charge yesterday in another of a series of articles for his Cairo newspaper purporting to report on conditions in Israel.
It was pointed out that only last week 25 young Arab villagers completed a six-week course in irrigation methods sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Agriculture’s department for the development of Arab villages. The course was given at the Hadassah Rural Vocational Training Center at Kfar Vitkin.
The youths, between the ages of 17 and 19, lived at a Youth Aliyah camp near the school. The course aimed at giving the youthful Arabs a basic Knowledge of irrigation methods. After graduation they returned to their villages to teach other Arab farmers what they had learned.
A severe attack on Israel was made at the Asian-African Student Conference held at Bandung, Indonesia, it was reported in the press here today. The Israel Student Association was not admitted to the conference at the request of the Arab delegates, the Bandung dispatches said.
The delegate from Syria, who led the anti-Israel attack, told the conference that “the creation of Israel in the Middle East was an imperialist trick meant as pressure on the Arab countries and their future, politically, economically and militarily.” He charged Israel with forcing “true natives of Palestine” out of their homes to live as refugees and “to lead a beggars life.”
(In Jerusalem, the Israel Students Association announced that it will protest its exclusion from the student conference at Bandung “on all international platforms in which it participates.” It disclosed that it had sent two applications for admission to the committee which organized the Bandung parley, but received no reply. The association received a message of sympathy from the South African Student Organization which stated that it would not participate in the Bandung meeting if Israel were excluded.)
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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.
