Canadian Jewish Leaders Meet with Premier; Ask Security for Israel

The Canadian Jewish community today presented a memorandum to the Prime Minister urging that in any projected meetings, within or without the United Nations, that the Government use its good offices to secure “some precise international statement that would bring Israel a sense of lasting security.”

A joint delegation representing the United Zionist Council of Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress met with Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker and Sidney E. Smith, Secretary of State for External Affairs. Led by Samuel Bronfman and Lawrence Freiman, presidents respectively of the Congress and the United Zionist Council, the delegation submitted oral and written representations “in the hope that they may possibly assist with whatever discussions are now taking place within the Government of Canada in preparation for any forthcoming meeting.”

In the brief, the delegation pointed out that “amid the grave events of the past weeks, Israel has displayed admirable steadiness and calm. Obviously, Israel’s interest in these events, and in any forthcoming conferences, is for her a paramount one. Moreover, it can be said that any such meetings will have failed in one of their essential purposes if they did not fully consider and perhaps succeed in providing formulas to secure the future territorial integrity of Israel and to establish also some basis for a viable relationship between Israel and the Arab world–although a General Assembly resolution and program may not by itself be able to fulfill such a task.”

The delegation also recommended that every effort be made to have the “UAR and the other Arab states recognize Israel, to have them stop their economic boycott and to have them cooperate in some human and realistic program for refugee resettlement, particularly on land available in Syria and Iraq.”