A resolution appealing to President Truman to give full de jure recognition to Israel, remove the embargo on arms shipments to Israel and to extend a loan to the Jewish state for constructive purposes was adopted here today at the closing session of the Silver Anniversary convention of the National Committee for Labor Palestine. The various sessions of the parley were attended by 3,000 delegates from 325 cities throughout the United States.
The resolution also called on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations to follow President Truman’s directives on Israel. The 20 nations which have already recognized Israel were urged to help the Jewish state achieve U.N. membership and to bring pressure to bear on the Arab states to withdraw their armies from Palestine. The resolution, which expressed the organization’s support of Israel and the Histadruth, also pledged its resources “to help bring our brethren to Israel, where they may once again enjoy independence, freedom and security.”
Eliahu Epstein, special Israeli representative to the United States, addressing the convention, asserted that Israel had no intention “of losing control over the Negev, which is part of our sovereign territory.” He emphasized that the Negev “will be defended by us just as we have been defending Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the Jordan Valley.” Calling attention to the passage of the partition plan by the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 29 last year, he said that in the last twelve months “we have found that was all the United Nations gave us.” The Israeli representative denounced the “hostile and selfish forces within the United Nations, led by Great Britain” adding that “none of the machinations of our enemies in Paris will prevail.”
ISRAELI, JEWISH AGENCY LEADERS ADDRESS PARLEY
Isaac Ben Zvi, president of the Jewish National Council of Israel, declared that the state of Israel is more interested in ploughshares and farm tractors than in guns and ammunition. “But we must defend ourselves against those infamous forces–under British leadership–which seek to destroy us.” Ben Zvi also insisted that “peace is our immediate objective. But we want a just peace. We want to sit down with the Arabs at a conference table and work things out.
In a review of the current situation in Israel, Berl Locker, chairman of the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem and another speaker at the parley, declared that “it cannot be denied, it is obvious to every observer, that our position now is stronger then it over was.” He added that “we need Jewish Zionists and Jewish unity now more than ever before.” Locker assorted that the state of Israel belongs not only to its present inhabitants but to all those who are to come there to rebuild their lives, thus helping in the upbuilding of the life of the nation.
Eliahu Dobkin, head of the Jewish Agency immigration department, who just arrived from Israel and Paris, announced that 80,000 immigrants have been absorbed into the Israeli economy in the six-and-a-half months of the existence of the Jewish state. He asserted that in 1949 Israel will admit 200,000 more Jewish immithus erasing the “shams of the DP camps in the midst of the so-called European civilization.” Dobkin called the Israeli immigration and colonization program the Jewish statue’s “second front.”
Edward Corsi, New York State Industrial Commissioner, who recently visited Israel, called on the U.S. to grant “tonight” the same degree of recognition to Israel as had the Soviet Union. A message of congratulation was received by the convention from President Chain Weizmann of Israel. Joseph Schlossberg, national chair man, and all other officers of the organization, were reelected.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
