U.S. Labor Zionists Approve Pact on American Zionist Council

Approval of the “Jerusalem agreement” under which part of the functions of the American section of the Jewish Agency would be transferred to the American Zionist Council, was voted here today by the central committee of the Labor Zionist Organization of America.

The agreement was reached at Jerusalem last month among Premier David Ben Gurion of Israel, the chairmen of the Jerusalem and American sections of the Jewish Agency and the presidents of the four major Zionist parties in the United States. It aims at strengthening the American Zionist movement, and was approved in principle last Sunday by the national executive of the Zionist Organization of America. The decision taken today by the Labor Zionist Organization reads:

“The Central Committee of the Labor Zionist Organization of America, after hearing the report of its representatives on the agreement reached in Jerusalem to recommend to the respective Zionist organizations in America a five-point program to broaden the scope of the American Zionist Council, approves the agreement in principle and authorizes the president to appoint a committee of six to evolve and to suggest to the Central Committee all necessary details and methods for the implementation of the agreement and, upon approval thereof, to enter upon negotiations with all of the organizations concerned for their effectuation.

“In endorsing the agreement, the Central Committee reiterates the stand previously taken by the L. Z. O. A. and reaffirmed by its national convention last July. This calls for 1. the expansion of the field of activities of the American Zionist Council to include substantially those functions agreed upon in Jerusalem; 2. the granting to the Council of authority to act within the agreed fields without recourse to the individual parties; 3. the assignment to the Council of additional fields of activity, when deemed necessary or desirable, by the agreement of at least two-thirds of all the Zionist parties; and 4. the establishment of a key of representation on the Council which shall approximate as closely as possible the composition of the American delegation to the last Zionist Congress.”

The Central Committee of the L. Z. O. A. also adopted a resolution voicing its condemnation of the “farce parading as judical procedure” which recently sent eleven men to the gallows and condemned three to life imprisonment in Prague, after most of them, who were Jews, had “confessed” to being “bourgeois Jewish nationalists” and parties to an “international Zionist conspiracy.”