A proposal to limit the World Zionist Organization to a membership of only those pledged to personal aliyah, as proposed recently by Yitchak Korn, general secretary of the Ichud Olami-Poale Zion, was decisively rejected at the recent meetings in Jerusalem of the Jewish Agency executive, according to Mrs. Rose L. Halprin, chairman of the Jewish Agency-American Section, who has just returned from the meetings.
Instead, she said, the executive of the Jewish Agency will propose to the next World Zionist Congress, to be held in June, the maintenance of the “unity and integrity of the World Zionist Organization as a world Jewish mass movement composed of many ideological wings. There will be created, however, within the structure of the WZO, a ‘tnuat magshimim,’ a group of persons who will have taken the pledge of personal aliyah.”
She said that the members of the Jewish Agency, both Israeli and American, recognized that the question of aliyah must assume a pre-eminent role in the work of the Zionist organization. But, she pointed out: “Aliyah from the West is a two-way preposition that involves both the willingness of the immigrant to go to Israel and the ability of Israel’s economy to make available for the newcomer a work opportunity commensurate with the immigrant’s training and needs. Until this is accomplished,” she continued, “aliyah from the West will be necessarily hampered.”
There was a strong consensus of opinion at the meeting. Mrs. Haprin said, that while “aliyah will have to assume a major role in the program of the Zionist organization, the WZO has other essential functions in the Jewish world in the continuing struggle against assimilation and alienation. The Zionist organization will have to continue and intensify its educational and cultural programs among the Jews of the world to develop better understanding between Israel and the Diaspora and, in this way, to foster and develop the potential of immigration to Israel from the affluent countries.”
The meetings of the Jewish Agency executive, Mrs. Halprin said, were “fruitful,” in having cleared the air and in making it possible to plan for a constructive discussion of the future of the movement at the next World Zionist Congress.
Declaring that there has been much misunderstanding in the press of both Israel and the United States of what transpired at the meetings of the Jewish Agency, Mrs. Halprin said that the decisions of the executive were clear as to the future lines of structure of the movement.
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