Dr. Nahum Goldmann, replying at the Zionist Congress here to some of the speeches, said that in view of the “positive” nature of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s address, there was no room for polemics and that he only wanted to comment on two points made by the Prime Minister.
Dr. Goldmann said that telling American Jews, particularly the youth, that there were foreigners in their homeland would simply bring a negative reaction and not immigration. However, he said, appealing to their spirit of pioneering could bring many thousands, particularly since in recent years there has been less satisfaction in the United States with material abundance only and a search for spiritual values.
He said that the Prime Minister’s insistence that deeds, not words, counted, was correct but that it had grave implications. He said that when the Prime Minister and other speakers talked about 100, 000 Jewish youth coming from Western countries to Israel for two years, they had to realize that this would call for hundreds of top rate additional schools and thousands of new teachers.
His sharpest rebuttal, which was made in a friendly manner, was to the speech by Menahem Beigin, Herut leader, and particularly to Beigin’s assertion that the Jewish people could not remain neutral in the East-West struggle but must join on the side of the West. Terming that statement “irresponsible, ” Dr. Goldmann said the Jewish people as such would be in a final tragic split with the cutting off of 3, 500, 000 Jews in the Soviet bloc.
“I am convinced that Russia can solve the Jewish problem only by permitting some emigration to Israel, ” he said. “There is no reason why some day Moscow will not reach the same conclusion as that of other East European governments, that those Jews who are unable to integrate in the nation’s economic and social life should be permitted to depart.”
Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, expressed regret in her address during the general debate that Israel had not succeeded in establishing cordial relations with the Soviet Union in line with its policy of seeking friendship with all nations without regard to their political systems. She emphasized that Israel was maintaining good relations with many East European countries.
She explained to the delegates that there were both moral and political reasons for Israel’s assistance to the newly independent African nations. She devoted a large part of her speech, made in Yiddish, to demonstrating that the Arabs themselves reject the claim of President Nasser of the United Arab Republic to speak for all Arabs.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
