Israelis who insist on a “hands-off policy” by Zionists towards Israel, as well as American Zionists who demand absolute autonomy for their own movements in the United States were repudiated here tonight by Dr. Hahum Goldmann, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, addressing 400 delegates attending the 41st annual convention of Bnai Zion, fraternal Zionist organization.
Dr. Goldmann called for a “rejuvenated, fighting Zionism” which will play a more active role both in Israel and outside the new state. For many years, he declared the “upbuilding of Israel and the ingathering of the exiles must remain the joint task of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.” The Zionist movement, Dr. Goldmann asserted, “can fulfill its task only in full and close cooperation with the Government of Israel.”
Earlier, Louis Lipsky, chairman of the American Zionist Council, declared that the general effect of the three power agreement on Middle East arms shipments will be “to restrain extreme views in the Arab states, but there is as yet no evidence of a change of mood in the British Foreign Office or in the Division of our State Department which deals with the Middle East.” He added: “We look to President Truman to exercise, as he has done on former occasions, a restraining influence upon the State Department in this connection.”
A plea to American Jewry to continue to render to the state of Israel political, cultural and economic aid was made by Dr. Harris J. Levine, president of the Jewish National Fund of America. The convention adopted a resolution proposed by the Jewish National Fund head, who is a former president of Bnai Zion, demanding the “continued autonomy and independence of the J.N.F. and its traditional fund-raising activities.” Mendel N. Fisher, executive director of the J.N.F., reported to the convention that in the ten-month period ending April, 1950, a total of 107 now settlements were established by the Fund in Israel.
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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.
