Israel Absorbed 360, 000 Jews from Communist States; 5, 700 from Russia

Some 5, 700 Jews have arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union, among an overall total of 360, 000 from the Communist states of Eastern Europe, Premier David Ben Gurion last night told a meeting of the Histadrut’s council in preparation for the labor movement’s ninth national convention of Histadrut.

Foreign Minister Golda Meir, who addressed the Histadrut session this morning, called on Israel’s Jewry to take the lead in absorbing the present group of immigrants and the waves coming in the future. She asked that the people of this country take the lead so that, on her forthcoming tour of the United States, she could tell “our American brethren what we do here and bring them to make greater efforts, as they did during the War of Liberation.”

Giving an impetus to the impression already widely held here that the current immigration wave from Rumania would soon widen into a flood augmented by Soviet Jewry, Mrs Meir said that “in spite of all logic and arguments, we are convinced in the hope that immigration (from the USSR) would come as well. We may not even find an explanation for such a move from official authorities, but still it may come tomorrow. ” Mrs. Meir will emplane Thursday for her trip to the United States.

Mr. Ben Gurion, commenting in his speech on the international scene, accused the Soviet Union of heading those forces which “practice incitement against us in the international arena, ” He charged that the USSR had even set up a special “peace movement” for that purpose.

He also criticized the “false neutrality” of “important and influential personalities on the international scene who proclaim their allegiance to neutrality and peace, but are not neutral or peace-loving towards Israel.”