A warning to South American Jews to prepare to emigrate to Israel before it is too late was issued by World Zionist Executive chairman Louis A. Pincus in his keynote speech prepared for delivery at the opening session tonight of the 28th World Zionist Congress. “In this world of social and economic conflict, no far-seeing Jew can deny that the Zionist solution is the only answer,” Pincus stated.
He said he did not want to “raise the cry of catastrophe too soon or too extremely,” but, he added, “Our history showed that when social and economic crises arise in any country the most vulnerable element is the Jewish minority.” Pincus referred to the recent social and economic upheavals in several Latin American countries where he noted, however, that Jews were free in contrast to Jews in the Soviet Union and Arab countries.
Pincus chided the leaders of Latin American Jewry for not pressing for aliya. “This is a community in which almost every top communal post is filled by a self-declared Zionist.” he said. “Therefore, to this leadership the Congress is entitled to turn and pose the question flatly: are you prepared to lead the community, openly and unashamedly in the direction of the Zionist solution at a time when aliya can be organized constructively and with care? Or are you going to leave it and afford another example of refugee aliya which did not have to be?”
On the question of Soviet Jews, Pincus insisted that the demand “Let My People Go,” must be the center of the Zionist movement’s activity. In what some saw as a reference to recent remarks by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, that the struggle for the rights of Jews who remain in the Soviet Union must be pursued with at least equal vigor, Pincus said, “We are involved in a life and death struggle for Russian Jews. No ivory tower, armchair or so-called long term philosophy, divorced from immediate reality, should deter us from our path as chosen by the Soviet Jews.” (See story P. 2 for other Congress events.)
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