“Arab states, as well as various leaders of Palestine Arabs, continue to blazen for the their determination to renew the war against destine Arabs, continue to blazen forth their determination to renew the war against Israel at the earliest opportunity,” Arthur Lourie, Israeli Consul General in New York, told the National Assembly for Labor Israel here last night, addressing the 750 delegates at Hotel New Yorker.
“It seems to then in no measure” inconsistent that they should simultaneously demand that Israel take back hundreds of thousands of Arabs, presumably to await and to participate in the renewed onslaught. Israel Is prepared to do its share within the framework of a general peace settlement with the other countries of the Middle last in effectuating a settlement of the refugee problem.”
Mr. Lourie also revealed that the enemies of Israel, who failed last year to persuade the U.N. General Assembly to accept the Bernadette Plan, have not given up. the offensive on behalf of the mutilation of Israel by cutting out of our small territory, the Negev, is once again under way, though” at present covertly and without fanfare,” he asserted. “In the game of power politics, the fact that the Arabs have already more deserts than they know what to do with and that the Negev will be developed, if developed at all, only by the Jews, is irrelevant.” For the moment these plans are maturing behind an attack on another front in which the case of the Arab refugees is being made a political pawn, he said.
Robert Nathan, noted economist, told the Assembly that if Israel is to bring in 750.000 immigrants in the next four years, it will need a minimum investment of at least $2,000,000,000 to absorb these people. He stressed that the Israeli Government must accelerate and emphasize and put greater stress on bringing in private capital.” those who are ideologically opposed to private capital will be very unhappy, he said, but it must be realized that ideology has no place in a country where 750,000 people must be absorbed.
Other speakers included Hayim Greenberg, member of the executive of the Jewish Agency; Baruch Zuckerman, president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America; Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan; Dr. Horace M. Kallen; Br, Samuel M, Blumenfield; Rabbi Samuel Wohl; and Mrs. Bert Goldstein, president of the Pioneer Women.
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