Prominent Jews, city officials and representatives of the Governor’s office and the government of Israel gathered at City Hall yesterday to pay tribute to Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky. Mayor Edward Koch proclaimed Oct. 22 ” Jabotinsky Day” which marked the beginning of the Jabotinsky centennial year.
The proclamation paid tribute to the “legendary Ze’ev Jabotinsky, statesman, soldier, poet and architect of the State of Israel, whose accomplishments are proudly recorded in the struggle for the independence of Israel during the first four decodes of the 20th Century.” Jabotinsky was the founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I, the Betar and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, and in the late 1930s warned European Jewry of the impending doom of the Holocaust. He died in New York in 1940.
Among those present at the City Hall gathering was Israel Knesset member Haim Corfu, chairman of the Knesset’s Likud bloc, and Paul Kedar, Israel’s Consul General in New York. Kedar read a special message from Premier Menachem Begin of Israel to Koch thanking him for his decision to commemorate the centenary of Jabotinsky’s birth.
The event was sponsored by the United Zionists-Revisionists Herut) whose chairman, Eryk Spektor, received the proclamation on behalf of the movement founded by Jabotinsky. The Jabotinsky Centennial Dinner will be held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel Nov. 11 and Begin will be the main speaker.
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