Labor Zionist Assails Begin’s Attack on Kibbutz Movement

Itzhak Korn, a member of the Central Committee of Israel’s opposition Labor Party charged yesterday that Premier Menachem Begin’s recent attacks on kibbutzim and other officials’ attacks on the Histadrut “shake the base of the pioneering structure and can destroy the pillars of Israeli society.”

Korn, a leader in the World Zionist movement, asserted that the only “counterweight against a tendency to careerism in Israel among the people are Labor institutions which believe in progressive democracy, values based on the ideals of kibbutzim and on the principles of the early founders of Israel.”

Addressing a meeting here of the National Council of the League of Friends of Labor Israel, Korn said that it was “vital to have a larger periphery” of Jews through the world who will show solidarity with the kibbutzim and Histadrut in Israel especially since, he added, “the present government of Israel often attacks pioneering groups in the Jewish state.”

“All Israel is united against the external dangers, such as the eight-point Saudi Arabia (peace) plan,” he said, “but we can never accept attacks on the pioneering groups of Israel.”

FUELS ETHNIC TENSION

Several hundred delegates attended the gathering of the League which Kom described as “an independent group which sympathizes with the ideals of Israeli labor.” Kom said that he hoped the government would not attack kibbutzim, since a great number of Sephardim in Israel do not belong to kibbutzim, and that “an attack by the Prime Minister of Israel on kibbutzim which declares that the settlements are rich further exacerbates tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.”

Kom, who helped found the League of Friends of Labor Israel a few years ago, also announced at the Council meeting that a new World Council would hold its first meeting in Israel in January for a founding Convention. Delegates will attend from the U.S. and Canada, France, Australia and other countries, he said.