The Soviet Union was urged to give its Jewish population the same rights enjoyed by other communities and to allow Jews wishing to emigrate to Israel to do so in a resolution adopted today by the Socialist International Council now meeting here.
In another resolution the delegates supported Israel’s demands for unimpeded transit in the Suez Canal and backed the rights of those seamen who have suffered from the Arab blockade of Israel. The delegates also called for gradual disarmament under mutual controls.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion addressed a mass meeting of 25,000 persons who turned out to welcome the Socialist leaders. He said that if the Council meeting of Socialists from Europe, Asia and Africa “turns out to be a precedent for further cooperation between Nations, then this meeting may become a historic turning point and may even be more important than the summit talks. ” He stressed that “in the final analysis it is not the leaders but the working classes that decide the world’s future.
Other speakers at the rally at Haifa Stadium were Alsing Andersen, president of the Socialist International, British Socialist leader Hugh Gaitskell, who praised Israel for having built “something very near to Socialist ideals”; and Eric Ollenhauer, West German Socialist leader, who said he was greatly moved by the occasion of speaking to Israelis. He expressed the hope that Israel would learn to trust the “new Germany.”
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