Zionist Leaders Warn Against Overconfidence Following Sinai Pact

Two world Zionist leaders today warned the Jewish community against being lulled into a state of overconfidence as a result of the Israel-Egypt pact by underrating the impact of the concerted Arab propaganda campaign launched among all sectors of the population. They called for a stepped-up public education drive to rally support for Israel’s security which, they said, is seriously threatened by extremist Arab regimes.

Addressing here a meeting of the executive committee of the World Confederation of United Zionists, Ezra Z. Shapiro, its president, and Kalman Sultanik, executive vice-president, asserted that it would be “a colossal blunder for Jews everywhere to assume that the signing of the interim agreement gives cause for complacency as long as there is no acquiescence by the Arab states for secure Israel boundaries.”

The World Confederation of United Zionists is the central coordinating body of all Zionist organizations throughout the world who subscribe to the principles of non-identification with political parties in Israel. In the United States the main constituents of the Confederation are Hadassah, Bnai Zion and the American Jewish League for Israel.

ZIONIST CONSCIOUSNESS STRESSED

Shapiro, who serves as chairman of the World Keren Hayesod, stressed the need for the Zionist movement to wage a campaign among the Jewish communities “to deepen the Zionist ideology by imparting an understanding and consciousness of the meaning of the centrality of Israel in Jewish life today,”

Shapiro emphasized the importance at this time of strengthening non-party Zionism to attract all segments of diaspora Jews who do not wish affiliation with a political party in Israel. Involvement in diaspora Zionist affairs by Zionist leaders in Israel who are leaders of a political party in Israel would be detrimental to the Zionist movement, he said.

Sultanik, a member of the World Zionist Executive, reporting on his visits to Latin America, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, stated that the influx of Arab oil funds into those countries for propaganda purposes have also stimulated the local Arab residents to a closer alliance with the anti-Semitic and extremist leftist groups, contributing to the creation of an anti-Semitic climate. He reported that these anti-Israel sentiments have even infiltrated into certain government ranks.

Sultanik further stated that the economic difficulties, as was the case in other countries in the past, are being exploited by anti-Semitic elements to incite the population against the Jews and against Israel. He underscored the urgency for world Jewry to rally the constructive forces throughout the world in order “to prevent the sowing of the seeds for the nucleus of another holocaust.”