Dr. Goldmann Sharply Criticizes Ben-gurion for New Attack on Zionism

Sharp criticism of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for his latest attack on the Zionist movement was voiced at a press conference here today by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization.

Dr. Goldmann said that the Prime Minister, who declared in an article last Friday in Davar, organ of the Israel Labor Federation, that the term “Zionism” had been emptied of all content, was undermining respect for him by personal attacks and belittling polemic. The Prime Minister also had said that the World Zionist Organization should change its name to the “Jewish organization.”

Dr. Goldmann pointed out that Mr. Ben-Gurion had affronted him personally by putting quotation marks around his title as president of the World Zionist Organization in the Davar article. “I refuse and will continue to refuse to follow suit or to reply to such attacks,” Dr. Goldmann said.

Referring to the Prime Minister’s renewed assaults on the Zionist movement, Dr. Goldmann said that these were in direct contradiction to the charter between the Israel Government and the World Zionist Organization and to the joint resolutions adopted at a “summit meeting” between the Government and the Jewish Agency before the last World Zionist Congress.

Dr. Goldmann stressed that Mr. Ben-Gurion was a signatory to the resolutions adopted at that meeting last May 26. “It is time that the Israel Government showed concern that the principle of the Government’s collective responsibility should also be applied to the Prime Minister.”

COMMENTS CRITICALLY ON THE BEN-GURION–BLAUSTEIN JOINT DECLARATION

Dr. Goldmann also commented critically on the joint declaration of proper relations between Israeli and American Jewry released Sunday by the Prime Minister in Jerusalem and in New York by Jacob Blaustein, honorary president of the American Jewish Committee, at the organization’s 54th annual meeting. Mr. Blaustein returned to the United States after lengthy discussions on the question with Mr. Ben-Gurion and his Cabinet.

The joint declaration, reaffirming one which emerged from a 1950 meeting of the two Jewish leaders, said that the people of Israel had no intention of interfering with the internal affairs of Jewries in other countries, that the emigration of Jews to Israel was a matter of personal choice, and that the Israel Government would do nothing which would “undermine the sense of security and stability of American Jewry.”

Dr. Goldmann, commenting on the declaration in the name of the new executive of the Jewish Agency, said there was nothing to quarrel with in the content of the declaration, but that it was worthwhile to point out that Mr. Ben-Gurion had not found it necessary to demand from the American Jewish Committee or from Mr. Blaustein personally support of objectives which he “repeatedly and most emphatically demands at every opportunity and which he declares are the duties of the Jews of the Diaspora,” such as the support of Jewish and Hebrew education and the encouragement of immigration to Israel.

SAYS BEN-GURION VIOLATED THE CHARTER GRANTED TO THE JEWISH AGENCY

Dr. Goldmann also expressed “great regret” over the manner as well as the fact of the joint declaration. He questioned the appropriateness of such a joint statement between the Prime Minister of Israel and an American personality who, however important he might be, “did not represent American Jewry.”

He said that the Prime Minister violated the spirit of the charter recognizing the Jewish Agency as the organ linking the Jewish State with other Jewish communities. He did so, Dr. Goldmann said, by not seeing fit to consult with either the American Zionist leaders then in Jerusalem or with the Jewish Agency concerning the usefulness of the declaration. He added he could not understand how the Prime Minister could make a joint declaration with the representative of an organization which, as a matter of principle, refuses to be identified with any representative or democratic organization of American or world Jewry.

Dr. Goldmann noted that the American Jewish Committee was the only major American Jewish organization which declined to join in the Presidents’ Club of major Jewish groups in the United States several years ago. He expressed regret that Mr. Ben-Gurion, “without adequate knowledge of the internal situation of American Jewry,” undertook to himself “the prerogative” of establishing who represented that Jewry.

The World Zionist leader preceded his comments on the Ben-Gurion–Blaustein declaration with the statement that nothing he said should be regarded as a personal reflection on Mr. Blaustein whose friendship, he said, he valued. He emphasized that Mr. Blaustein was fully devoted to Israel’s interests and was always ready to extend help to Israel as well as to other Jewish problems.

Dr. Goldmann said the American Jewish Committee was an active and important organization but for all its positive approach to Israel, he said, the Committee represented only a limited number of American Jews.