The Israeli Parliament tonight overwhelmingly rejected a Communist motion of non-confidence in Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion because of his meeting in New York this week with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany. The motion was rejected by a vote of 59 to three with 24 abstentions.
Acting Prime Minister Levi Eshkol replied briefly to the Communist motion. He told the Knesset that Mr. Ben-Gurions trip was within the framework of efforts to strengthen Israel’s position and to explain its problems. He pointed out that the Prime Minister had frequently announced his readiness to meet with the heads of all governments for that purpose. He expressed the opinion that Mr. Ben-Gurion was still prepared to meet those heads of states who so far had evinced no interest in such a meeting.
Mr. Eshkol’s statement was taken here as confirmation of reports that Jerusalem had sounded out the possibilities of a meeting of Mr. Ben-Gurion with Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev but had met with a non-committal attitude. In the debate on the motion, spokesmen for the Communists and the rightwing Herut party joined in a bitter attack on Mr. Ben-Gurion for having met with Chancellor Adenauer.
Moshe Carmel of Achdut Avodah, speaking for his party and the Mapam, the two leftwing labor members of the coalition, said the two parties would vote against the Communist motion. He asserted, however, that both parties had opposed the idea of the Adenauer meeting from the moment it was first suggested and still disapproved of it.
Dr. Peretz Bernstein, leader of the General Zionist Party, told the Knesset that his party approved the Ben-Gurion-Adenauer meeting but would abstain on the vote. The party’s approval of the meeting, he said, was based on the belief that Israel’s unique position required her to seek support wherever possible. The ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel party announced its abstention and Rabbi Mordechai Nurock, a leader of the National Religious party and long a foe of relations with Germany, made a similar announcement.
ISRAELI PRESS CRITICAL OF THE BEN-GURION-ADENAUER MEETING
The Ben-Gurion-Adenauer meeting continued today to draw critical comment from Tel Aviv newspapers, some of them representing the views of parties in the government coalition. The strongest criticism came in an editorial in Haaretz, leading independent daily, which asserted that the meeting meant not only the complete moral rehabilitation of Germany but was likely to be used by the Germans in the future whenever they were reminded of Nazi atrocities or latent anti-Semitism.
The paper complained that Mr. Ben-Gurion seemed to be judging by Dr. Adenauer, who was a product of the pre-Nazi era, and said he could not know what the face of Germany would be after Dr. Adenauer disappeared from the scene. The newspaper also warned of the implications the meeting could have on Israeli-Soviet relations since, it said, Dr. Adenauer symbolized the most extreme anti-Soviet attitude.
The newspaper Al Ha-Mishmar, organ of the Mapam party, described the meeting as a “painful fact interpreted in a harmful, serious way.” Lamerhav, organ of the Achdut Avodah party, noted in an editorial that the meeting had “saddened and depressed many Jews in Israel and abroad.”
Tel Aviv evening newspapers reported today that a result of the Ben-Gurion–Adenauer meeting in New York this week might be a German loan to Israel of $75-100,000,000 for industrial development. Chancellor Adenauer was reported to have told Mr. David Ben-Gurion that he would be prepared to push such a loan.
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