Israeli Ambassador Meir Rosenne stressed last night that the occasional “confrontations” between diaspora Jewry and Israel demonstrates the strength of the unity of the Jewish people.
“The mistake of our enemies has always been to exaggerate differences of opinion; to try and describe differences of opinion as a lack of solidarity,” Rosenne told a dinner celebrating the 40th anniversay of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC) at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
“The enemies of ours never understood that this was the most important expression of strength,” the Ambassador explained. “Only if you are strong can you afford the luxury to disagree.”
CONTRIBUTION OF NJCRAC PRAISED
Rosenne said the NJCRAC’s “contribution is immense in strengthening the links between Israel and the diaspora.” He read a telegram from Israeli Premier Yitzhak Shamir in which Shamir expressed Israel’s “appreciation” to the organization made up of II national and III local Jewish community relations agencies for the “role you have played in explaining Israel’s just cause and defending it.”
Rosenne recalled that in 1961 when he served in the Israeli Consulate in New York, Shlomo Argov, the then Consul General, and the late Isaiah Minkoff, NJCRAC’s founding director and executive vice chairman, and several others began working on behalf of Soviet Jewry establishing the movement which eventually saw more than 250,000 Jews emigrate from the USSR. Rosenne at that time worked with the Embassy on the Soviet Jewry issue.
Noting that the NJCRAC had worked to help not only Jews but also non-Jews, Rosenne suggested that instead of writing books on Jewish history the biographies of some 400 Jewish leaders attending the NJCRAC’s four day plenary session here could “teach future generations what we stand for and what we fight for.”
The four-day session in which the delegates mapped the NJCRAC’s policies and strategies for the coming year ended today.
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