Zionists Point to Need for Stronger Movement As They Mark Balfour Day in N. Y.

The need for a strong Zionist movement, which had been instrumental in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by the British Government 50 years ago, viewing “with favor” the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people,” was emphasized here tonight at a Balfour Day celebration conducted by the American Zionist Council. The role of the United States Government in staunchly supporting the principle laid down by the Balfour Declaration was also emphasized at the meeting, attended by several hundred representatives of Zionist groups throughout the New York metropolitan area.

Among the principal speakers at the observance was Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s former Foreign Minister; Rabbi Israel Miller, who is also chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry; Dr. Emanuel Neumann, a member of the Jewish Agency executive; and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, of Temple Emanuel of Englewood, N. J.

Dr. Neumann noted in his address that, “apart from the World Zionist Organization, there was no widely representative body, ready and able to assume,” during the era highlighted by the Balfour Declaration, “the political and practical responsibilities of partnership on behalf of an otherwise fragmented Jewish people, leaderless and powerless.”

“With the establishment of the Jewish State,” Dr. Neumann continued, “the responsibilities of the Zionist Movement continued, though altered; while the support and cooperation forthcoming from the Diaspora, have grown tremendously. In view of these circumstances, and the very grave problems still confronting the State of Israel, we are being called upon, once more, to widen the organized Zionist base through a new process of reorganization. The movement is prepared, I am sure, to consider all reasonable and constructive proposals in that direction; but we should not become involved in changes for the sake of change which may weaken the movement, without assuring added strength. The time has not come to contemplate the liquidation of the strongest organized force in Jewish life, or the abdication of its historic responsibilities.”

ROLE OF U.S.A. DOCUMENTED; PLIGHT OF SOVIET JEWRY SEEN IN CONTRAST

In a documented analysis of the role played by the United States after the Balfour Declaration had been issued, Dr. Hertzberg declared “the U.S.A. has been from the beginning a principal architect of the Jewish State.” He said the protracted negotiations that led to the issuance of the Declaration in 1917 “did not take place in London alone.” In the United States, he pointed out, the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, head of the Zionist movement here, worked hard to advance the Zionist idea through diplomatic channels and by the “deep involvement” of President Wilson, who hailed the Declaration in a public statement pledging U.S. support to the “Jewish Homeland” principle. In 1922, he recalled, both houses of Congress endorsed the Balfour Declaration unanimously.

“That the United States is today strongly committed to the existence and security of the State of Israel,” said Dr. Hertzberg, “is thus the reaffirmation of the very basis of our policy as it existed from the very beginning. Beyond that, it represents a keeping of the promise that our country made when it was very much the co-author of the historic act whose 50th anniversary we are celebrating tonight.”

Rabbi Miller, in his address, juxtaposed the historic developments that followed two great world events that occurred almost simultaneously in November of 1917-the issuance of the Balfour Declaration has now resulted in the universal view that it was “a shining beacon of liberty, freedom and democracy,” the situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union Rabbi Miller said, “gives tragic witness to the lack of fulfillment of the promise of the Communist revolution. A slow but steady process of cultural and spiritual attrition is destroying the Jewish life of the 3,000,000 Jewish Soviet citizens. A pall of fear, thickened by an odious and vicious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, hangs heavily over Soviet Jewry. The humanitarian reunion of families, many of them separated by the holocaust, has virtually ceased. Premier Kosygin’s statement last December in Paris that the ‘door would be open’ to emigrants remains mere words.”