Objections to the decision of several Zionist factions to launch separate campaigns in the United States during this winter were voiced by Louis Lipsky, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
In a message addressed by Mr. Lipsky to the sixteenth Poale Zion Labor Party convention now in session in Chicago, he points out the danger which is involved for the Palestine fund raising endeavor if such a course is pursued.
“The Poale Zion, aided by the Zeiri Zion, will this year devote themselves, I understand, to the Palestine Workers’ Fund, which is intended to augment the financial support of workingmen’s institutions and activities in Palestine.” Mr. Lipsky said. “The public is probably also aware of the fact that the American Mizrachi intend this year also to appeal to the public for a fund of $500,000, for the maintenance of Mizrachi institutions and activities in Palestine.
“This raises an interesting and disturbing question. At the Basle Congress a resolution was introduced by the center groups aiming to prohibit all parties represented in the Congress from raising separate funds for institutions and activities already provided for, in part, by the Keren Hayesod budget. The resolution was defeated by a combination of the Left. The Right and Radical delegates. The Poale Zion and Mizrachi are therefore within their legal rights in raising separate funds for institutions and activities in which they are especially interested. Nor can there be any question of the right of Hadassah, which maintains a Medical Organization in Palestine, to collect funds for the institution in which it is interested.
“What is the effect of this system? All responsibility for raising the funds of the Keren Hayesod in America devolves upon the U.P.A., which becomes, by reason of the devotion of the parties to their own separate funds the exclusive responsibility of the Zionist Organization of America,” he said. “It is ## that the parties will ask for representation on the U.P.A., which will doubtless be given to them, but what is the practical value of such representation if the membership of the parties, will be absorbed in the collection of their own separate party funds? The result is bound to be the inevitable separation of the parties from the activities relating to the Keren Hayesod. In other words, the parties will aid in the framing of the Keren Hayesod budget at the Zionist Congress, but with the adjournment of the Congress their obligations cease. There will thus arise three or four distinct separate Zionist Organizations in America, with only one of them discharging to the full its obligations to the funds established by the Zionist Congress.
“The time has come for a discussion of plans for the unification of the Zionist movement in America. A form of such unification is found in Germany. Just as all parties are bound together in the Zionist Congress, the decisions of which are accepted as authoritative and final, so too, with proper safeguards for parties, an all inclusive American Zionist, Organization should be formed with proper consideration of the rights of parties, Unless something of this sort is done, we shall soon be involved in rivalry and competition to the detriment of all Zionist interests,” Mr. Lipsky declared.
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