The Zionist Organization of America issued a statement today charging the “Independent Zionists of America,” a group of ZOA leaders opposed to the president leadership, with intent “to undermine and weaken the ZOA.”
Plans of the new group to call a founding convention in March were announced earlier this week by Judge Louis E. Levinthal of Philadelphia, a former ZOA president. In issuing a statement of policy, Judge Levinthal said that the new organization expects to attract “American Jews who are demonstrating their friendship for Israel by their continued economic support but who do not have a voice in the affairs of the Zionist movement” because they do not “want to be enrolled in a partisan organization.”
The ZOA statement today accuses the new group, “which professes to be seeking to enroll ‘non-affiliated’ Zionists, “of concentrating “its recruitment drive on the already enrolled members of one–and only one–organization, the Zionist Organization of America.”
The ZOA statement contends that opposition claims that the organization is affiliated with the General Zionist party in Israel was a “red herring.” It says that the ZOA has never been affiliated with any Israeli party, although the ZOA has “expressed sympathy and cultivated friendly relations with like-minded organization’s within the Zionist movement in Israel and other parts of the world.” The statement warned ZOA members that any efforts to promote this “Independent” organization are inconsistent with membership in the Zionist Organization of America.
“It is strange” deed that these so-called ‘Independents, ‘who are themselves maintaining close relations with a political party in Israel–namely, the Progressive Party–should question the propriety of our fraternal contacts with like-minded groups of General Zionists in other countries within the framework of the World Zionist Organization,’ the ZOA statement says. “The fact is that Judge Levinthal himself, as well as his fellow- Independent,” Mr. Ezra Shapiro, owe their places of the World Zionist Actions Committee to their active collaboration with the Progressive Party of Israel” it points out.
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