Opening Parley Raises $1.2 Million of $6 Million Histadrut Campaign Goal

Israel will not permit the Big Powers to persuade it, as they did in 1956, to withdraw from occupied Arab territory without a stable, permanent peace treaty, according to Senator Jacob K. Javits, New York Republican, who recently returned from a visit to Israel. The Senator was the principal speaker at the annual national roll-call conference of the Israel Histadrut Campaign here yesterday. The conference was attended by 1,000 delegates who raised $1.2 million for support of Histadrut’s network of social, medical, educational and vocational projects in Israel. Campaign goal is $6 million.

Other speakers at the gathering were Yosef Almogi, member of the Knesset (Parliament) and former Minister of Development and Housing in Israel, and Shiekh Kemal Tareef, leader of the Druze communities in Israel who is visiting the United States at the invitation of the State Department. Dr. Sol Stein, director of the National Committee for Labor Israel, fund-raising arm for Histadrut in this country, read a message of greeting from Governor Rockefeller of New York.

Senator Javits said that while Israel is determined to achieve a real peace with the Arabs – not another armistice or cease-fire – “it does not seek to impose ‘hard’ terms on the Arabs.” The Senator said he was “fully convinced” that Israel is ready “to examine and discuss with the Arabs any proposals presented in good faith. They believe only direct negotiations can be fruitful or effective. Their’s is a mood of measured self confidence which does not seek a vindictive or punitive peace.”

Mr. Almogi said that “the actual struggle between us and the Arab countries is not a conflict between nations but between social systems, between philosophies of life, between feudalism and democracy.”