Zionists to Elect Delegates to Congress

For the first time since 1946, a nation-wide ballot will be conducted this fall through which the 700,000 enrolled Zionists in the United States will elect delegates to the next World Zionist Congress to be held in Jerusalem in January, 1972. This announcement was made here today by Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation who is also serving as chairman of the Elections Committee in the United States. The 152 delegates will be chosen by a mail ballot by the entire Zionist constituency as well as by the 13 national Zionist organizations and 10 youth and student groups which are affiliated with the AZF.

This is also the first time in which all members of the Zionist movement, even from the smallest communities which previously never had an opportunity to vote, will be casting their ballots for delegates for a Zionist Congress. The forthcoming Zionist Congress, in which 525 delegates from 30 countries will participate, will be held in the 75th Anniversary Year of the First Zionist Congress which was convened by Dr. Theodor Herzl in Basle, Switzerland in 1897.

Expressing “great satisfaction” with the decision of the Zionist groups in the U.S. to conduct elections for the 28th Zionist Congress, Itzhak Korn, member of the Knesset and general secretary of the World Labor Zionist Movement, said that such elections will assure “great moral and political importance” for the Zionist movement everywhere and not only in the U.S. Korn, who together with other members of the World Committee for Zionist Congress elections participated in the negotiations between the various American Zionist organizations, and presided at two meetings of the World Committee in New York, had proposed the election scheme which was finally adopted by the majority of U.S. Zionist groups.