Shazar Reports in Israel on Assurances Given by President Johnson

President Zalman Shazar, upon his return today from Washington where he headed the Israeli delegation attending the funeral of the late President Kennedy, conveyed to the Israeli people assurances he received from President Johnson that the United States would continue its policy of friendship to Israel.

He also reported that while in Washington, he spoke briefly with Anastas Mikoyan, the First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union. The conversation, he added, was not on political matters. (In New York, Israel’s Foreign Minister Golda Meir said that President Shazar’s conversation with Mr. Mikoyan had been held in Russian.)

In a review of the world political scene, Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban told a special Cabinet session here today that he felt confident that President Johnson would continue the Kennedy Administration’s friendly policy toward Israel.

Emphasizing that the wording of President Johnson’s message to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was not simply routine cordiality, Mr. Eban cited the statement by President Johnson that the late Mr. Kennedy’s “friendship for Israel was in the tradition of the close bonds which link our two countries. I intend to carry out this tradition to the best of my ability,” the American President declared.

An unusually large audience attended an official memorial meeting at Habimah Hall here last night closing three days of mourning in Israel for President Kennedy. The meeting, which was held under the auspices of the Israel-American Friendship League, was addressed by Deputy Prime Minister Eban and U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour.

Attendants had to close the doors of the hall long before the meeting began when the nearly 1,200 seats and all aisles were crowded to capacity. In his eulogy of the late President, Ambassador Barbour said; “He was a friend of Israel in the larger sense of our mutual concern for fundamental, national and personal freedom.”