A high Zionist tribunal has upheld the method selected by the American Zionist Federation to choose delegates to the next World Zionist Congress. In a ruling handed down here last night the Congress “Court of Honor” decreed that mail ballots were a proper means of election, thereby denying a challenge brought before the Court by the Zionist Organization of America and the United Zionists-Revisionists of America.
The tribunal also endorsed the AZF’s plan to select 55 percent of the delegates by ballot and 45 percent by party nomination. But it voided an inter-party agreement on the distribution of delegate seats which the ZOA and the Revisionists claimed was exclusionary.
The court ordered the parties not to abide by that agreement under which seats were to be distributed between Hadassah, the Labor Zionists and Mizrachi without regard to their respective memberships. The ZOA charged that the deal, made at a caucus last Sept. was designed to get the Mizrachi faction to vote in favor of the AZF’s election plans. There will be 152 American delegates to the 28th World Zionist Congress scheduled to open here Jan. 17.
ZOA, UZR TOLD TO RESPECT DECISION
Under the rules agreed to by 75 percent of the AZF area elections committee, no party will receive more than 40 percent of the seats regardless of its numerical strength and none will get less than three seats. Numerically, Hadassah accounts for about half of the AZF’s membership.
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