Jerusalem Zionist Assembly in Vigorous Debate over Immigration Question

Zionist leaders from Israel and abroad rolled up their sleeves and plunged into a vigorous, frequently heated debate here this afternoon on problems confronting the World Zionist Organization and Israel. The problems were many. But invariably they centered on one issue: the ways and means to stimulate large scale aliyah (immigration) to Israel, particularly from the affluent Jewish communities of the Western world.

The scene was the first meeting of a three day consultative assembly of the World Zionist Organization which opened last night with speeches by Prime Minister Eshkol, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, and Aryeh L. Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency.

Mr. Eshkol, in his speech last night, sought to allay the fears expressed by some Zionist leaders that plans are afoot to liquidate the Jewish Agency and transfer its functions to the Israel Government. Mr. Eshkol said there was no need to take alarm “at a speech here or a newspaper article there” advocating such a course. But, he said, the Jewish Agency must overhaul its machinery and become more efficient.

Israel’s Labor Minister, Yigal Allon, agreed with Prime Minister Eshkol that the Jewish Agency requires some degree of reorganization. He said that the areas in which it cooperates with the Government must be more clearly defined and strengthened. Mr. Allon is chairman of the Ministerial Committee on Immigration and Absorption.

Today’s session heard from Itzhak Ben Aharon, leader of the Achdut Avodah faction and a former Minister of Transport; Moshe Kol. Minister of Tourism, and the veteran American Zionist leaders, Dr. Emanuel Neumann and Dr. Israel Goldstein, the latter a resident of Israel for many years.

Dr. Neumann, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive in New York, said that American Jews never saw themselves as “contractors” to deliver a half million Jews to Israel. To them, he said, the “ingathering of the exiles” applied to Jews in countries where they suffered persecution or other stresses. The spiritual need for aliyah, he said, is an historical process, not a matter that is solvable by laws or by changes of leadership.

Dr. Goldstein, president of Keren Hayesod, the fund-raising arm of the Zionist movement, said a new Zionist program must make it clear that Zionism requires a personal commitment to aliyah. He favored proposals to establish a “magshimit,” an elite movement of Zionists who pledge themselves to settle in Israel.

Rabbi Hershel Schacter, of New York, president of the Mizrachi organization and of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, claimed that if Israel had adhered more to traditional Judaism it might have attracted more immigrants despite marginal difficulties.