Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey was honored here last night by the National Committee for Labor Israel and the American Trade Union Council for Histadrut at a dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel at which he was presented with the 1967 Histadrut Humanitarian Award. More than 600 distinguished guests attended the dinner. A $20,000 Humphrey Scholarship Fund to endow scholarships for young Israelis attending Histadrut vocational schools in Israel was announced at the gathering.
President Johnson said in a message to the dinner that he could think of no honor more appropriate than establishment of the Humphrey Histadrut Scholarship Fund “to give worthy young people in Israel the same measure of opportunity we seek for our own youth here in America.” Principal speakers were AFL-CIO president George Meany and Israel Ambassador Avraham Harman.
Zeev Barash, American representative of Histadrut, the labor federation in Israel, presented the bronze plaque symbolic of the award to Mr. Humphrey “in grateful appreciation of his outstanding efforts in fostering sympathetic understanding between the people of the United States and the people of Israel; and his warm encouragement to the cause of Histadrut.” Israel President Zalman Shazar lauded the Vice-President and the organizers of the tribute. A similar message was sent by Aharon Becker, Secretary-General of Histadrut.
Mr. Humphrey told the dinner he was “honored to receive this award, most of all because it comes from people 1 greatly admire and respect. I have always thought that the highest form of humanitarianism — humanitarianism that transcends mere charity — is helping others to help themselves. It is doing things with people, rather than for them. And that is the kind that both the American and Israeli labor movements have always practiced.” Mr. Humphrey said that “through the Afro-Asian Institute for Cooperative and Labor Studies, which has rightly enjoyed the generous support of American labor, Histadrut has been helping the peoples of other lands to organize for their own welfare and that of their nations.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
