Mapam Party Council Orders Sneh Not to Make Public Statements

The central council of the left-wing Socialist Mapam Party today instructed Dr. Moshe Sneh, leader of the extremist faction in the party, who was recently deposed from a leading party position, to make no public statements until a decision had been made on his political fate. Dr. Sneh was scheduled to address a Mapam mass meeting at Lydda today, but the council cancelled the affair at the last minute. The decision on Dr. Sneh will be made by the party council this week.

Meanwhile, the split within the pro-Soviet Mapam Party developed further today when Meir Yaari, one of the leaders of the Hashomer Hatzair–the strongest group within the Mapam–published an article in the party organ "Al Hamishmar" strongly attacking Dr. Sneh, who is the foremost defender in the party of the anti-Zionist line of the Soviet Government which found its expression at the recent "purge" trial in Prague and in a statement issued by the Central Council of the Communist Party of East Germany.

Mr. Yaari said that Dr. Sneh had deviated from the Mapam political line and was "nearing" the anti-Zionist camp. Mr. Yaari disclosed that Dr. Sneh had proposed to the Mapam steering committee that it delete from Mapam council decisions all references to the party’s participation in Zionist bodies, "thus proving that Dr. Sneh has reached a dangerous dilemma."

He emphasized that Dr. Sneh was trying to prove that the Prague trials were aimed at the Jewish bourgeoisie and not "against Jews like him." Yaari concluded by stating that Dr. Sneh, whose article had been censored by the party paper and who had distributed it himself, wished to oppose the party’s line and wanted to "show the world where he stands."

Officials of Kibbutz Yad Hanna today denied reports that the settlement had been expelled from the leftist Kibbutz Haartzi movement and then had joined the Communist movement as a result of the disagreement of many of its members with the Mapam stand on the Prague trial. The officials said that the members of the settlement had "never intended to disassociate themselves from the Zionist movement" and therefore remained within the Kibbutz Haartzi movement, although a number of Communist supporters left Yad Hanna.

(In New York, Avraham Schenker, president of the Progressive Zionist League-Hashomer Hatzair, stated that "Yad Hanna is not a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz, has never been a part of the Federation of Hashomer Hatzair settlements and therefore could not have been expelled from Kibbutz Artzi.")