Z. O. A. President Seeks to Remove “misunderstandings” with Israel

Abraham A. Redelheim, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told a press conference here yesterday that “if there are today no more than several thousand American residents in Israel, it is due rather to the discouragement of such immigration through the failure by Israel authorities to create the conditions which would facilitate such settlement of Americans and Canadians.”

The ZOA president urged that Israel’s immigration concepts should be “changed and adapted, at least in part, to the Western standards of present day pioneering.” At the same time, he appealed to the leadership of Israel to help remove “all misunderstandings and misconceptions which have arisen in relation to the issue of pioneer immigration from America to Israel and which have plagued the relationship between the Zionist movement and members of the Israel Government.”

Mr. Redelheim voiced the view that the encouragement and assistance of American aliyah to Israel is one of the central tasks of the Zionist movement. However, he emphasized that there are two equally major requisites for the successful promotion of such aliyah. He cited these as the availability in Israel of adequate housing for the accommodation of American settlers and the creation in this country of a climate to make aliyah an ideal of self-enrichment rather than an avenue of escape from anti-Semitism and discrimination. “The sooner this realization will find acceptance in Israel the brighter will be the prospects of the success of an aliyah program,” Mr. Redelheim said.

The ZOA president also took issue with a statement made last week in New York by Shimon Peres, director general of Israel’s Defense Ministry, criticizing the Zionist movement in the United States and declaring that feels that the United Jewish Appeal has replaced the Zionist movement in this country and has become the backbone of American Jewish relations with Israel.