Histadrut Foundation Sets $50 M Goal

The 10th annual economic conference of the Israel Histadrut Foundation closed last night at the Fontainebleau Hotel with a gala banquet at which a new goal of $50 million was set. Dr. Sol Stein, Foundation president, reported that the cumulative total of commitments since the Foundation was established 16 years ago reached the $40 million mark at the end of 1975 and that $2.5 million had been committed so far this year toward the 1976 additional target of $10 million worth of bequests and annuities that would go toward low cost mortgages for young Israeli couples and for other health, educational and welfare programs of Histadrut.

Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, guest of honor who received the Foundation’s “Forty Million Dollar Award,” told the 1250 guests that “This outpouring of understanding and support is a source of encouragement not only to Israel, but to all American Jews and also to non-Jews involved in the struggle for human freedom.”

Dinitz declared that “the defense of freedom does not begin in New York City or Miami, but wherever men fight for their liberty. Never before has there been greater solidarity between Israel and the American people than in these very days. Do not believe the prophets of doom and despair who tell lies in the hope that Israel’s friends will falter and fail. They lie because they don’t want American people to demonstrate solidarity with Israel.”

Saul C. Chaiken, president of the ILGWU, who was attending the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting at nearby Bal Harbor, made the presentation to Dinitz. Chaikin, a vice-president of National Council for Labor Israel, stated that “the fourteen million members of AFL-CIO, most of whom are not Jewish, are staunch friends of Israel because she represents a decent, humane society.”