The future role and functions of the Zionist Organization as a decisive force in the building and safeguarding of the State of Israel and as an instrument for cultural survival of the Jewish people everywhere, were stressed today by Rabbi Irving Miller, president of the Zionist Organization of America and chairman of the American Zionist Council, and Dr. Emanuel Neumann, former ZOA president and member of the Jewish Agency executive.
The two Zionist leaders spoke before 350 key workers and leaders from nine ZOA Regions, assembled at the First ZOA Area Conference on World Zionist Affairs which was convened to discuss the problems facing the world Zionist movement today. Jacques Torczyner, a ZOA vice president, presided.
Rabbi Miller said that “a seemingly endless debate over definitions of Zionism is today serving no constructive purpose” and that “against the background of present-day realities in Israel and the Diaspora, is quite academic.” Both Rabbi Miller and Dr. Neumann alluded to the world-wide discussion engendered by the statement addressed by David Ben Gurion to the Jerusalem meeting of the World Zionist Actions Committee last December. In this, the former Israeli Premier defined a Zionist as one who assumes the obligations of “personal emigration” to Israel.
Dr. Neumann said he felt that Mr. Ben Gurion’s “polemical statements on the future of Zionism may have a most salutary effect.” “The movement suffered severely from the fact that the State and Government of Israel have not had a clear and consistent line of policy toward the Zionist movement and its relations to the State,” he said. He asserted that the controversy now going on between Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders, including some of his own party colleagues, “reveals the root cause of the difficulty – the absence at this late date of a crystallized opinion on the subject within the dominant party.”
The speaker revealed that “despite the continued rift and occasional conflicts between the General Zionists and Progressives, they are actually nearer rapprochement and unification than at any time since the Progressives split off six years ago.” He further reported that “some of the Progressive leaders who were most instrumental in the formation of the Progressive party have come to realize that it was a historic mistake to split the forces of the center and are now seeking the way back toward union.”
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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.
