Louis Lipsky, chairman of the American Zionist Council, who is here in connection with the memorandum on Israel submitted to the Democratic National Convention by his organization, today expressed confidence that the Convention would reaffirm the Democratic Party’s consistent support of Israel. Today’s session of the Convention was opened with an invocation by Rabbi Louis Binstock of Temple Sholom of Chicago.
Jewish observers here were greatly impressed by the address delivered yesterday at the Convention by Governor Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois. Gov. Stevenson pointed out, among other things, that until four years ago the people of Illinois had chosen but three Democratic governors in a hundred years. One of them was a Protestant, the other a Catholic and the third-Henry Horner-was a Jew. “That my friends, is the American story written here on the prairies of Illinois, the heartland of the nation,” he emphasized.
Benjamin G. Browdy, former president of the Zionist Organization of America and member of the New York delegation to the Convention, is busy here conferring with individual members of the resolution committee in an attempt to secure the inclusion in the party platform of a plank recommending the repeal of the McCarran immigration law, which is opposed by all liberal and Jewish groups in the country.
ARAB REPRESENTATIVE SEEKS TO INFLUENCE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM
Norman Raies, representing Americans of Syrian descent and “Middle East countries” asked the resolutions committee to include in the Democratic platform a plank insisting on strict implementation of United Nations resolutions. He did not mention Israel nor call for aid to Arab refugees. However, he did refer to anti-Israel articles in “Life” magazine and in the “Reader’s Digest” as evidence that the Arabs have been alienated from the United States.
Organized Jewish labor in the United States at the Convention today voiced it support of the civil rights platform as recommended by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in which major Jewish organizations participated.
Emphasizing that he spoke for more than 500,000 Jewish organized workers in the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Jacob Siegel, chairman of the Chicago branch of the Jewish Labor Committee, urged the inclusion of this plank in the platform of the Democratic Party. Mr. Siegel appeared before the Convention resolutions committee.
The liberal forces within the 108-member resolutions committee seem near a victory on the civil rights issue following a lengthy fight within a 19-member drafting subcommittee to which Sen. Herbert H. Lehman of New York last night submitted a plank calling for Democratic Party support of a compulsory F.E.P.C. and a change in the Senate rules to permit closure of debate and thus open the way for passage of civil rights legislation in Congress. Sen. Lehman, a member of the drafting unit, and Senators Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and William Benton of Connecticut predicted victory for the liberal forces.
It appears that if the Southern faction is defeated in the drafting committee they will submit a “minority” report to the resolutions committee and may even take the fight to the Convention floor, where it is considered certain to be defeated. An attempt by Senators Warren Magnus on of Washington and John Spark man of Alabama to push through a “unity” proposal and keep the fight off the convention floor seems doomed to failure.
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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.
