The executive committee of the Histadrut, Israel’s Federation of Labor, today decided not to participate in the forthcoming economic conference in Moscow.
The Israeli labor movement has been invited to send five delegates to the Moscow parley. A special committee, composed mainly of the pro-Communist Mapam Party members and of members of the Communist Party, has been established to make arrangement for a delegation to go to the Soviet capital.
The Council of the left Poale Zion faction of the Mapam Party today adopted a resolution calling on the Israel Government to maintain “real neutrality” and not to identify itself with either the Eastern or the Western blocs. On internal issues, the faction, the weakest among the three which compose the Mapam Party, expressed opposition to the new Israel Government economic program. It also decided to fight within the Mapam Party against those forces which “demand a change in the Zionist line favoring the Communist line.”
(The New York Times reports today from Tel Aviv that the Israel and United States Governments are negotiating an agreement designed to put the U.S. on an equal footing with the Soviet Union in importing books, periodicals and newspapers to Israel. The agreement would permit distributors of United States books, magazines and newspapers to turn over local currency derived from sales here to the United States Embassy for the expenses of United States Government representatives in Israel. The United States Government relived of part of its dollar expenses in Israel, would compensate United States book, magazine and newspaper publishers in dollars in the United States.)
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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.