Zionist Contributors Group Asks Morgenthau to “take Himself Out” of U.j.a Conflict

The Committee of Zionist Contributors to the United Jewish Appeal, a new Zionist body composed of members of the Zionist Organization of America who have made contributions to the U.J.A., today issued a statement asking Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to “take himself out of the United Jewish Appeal controversy which is fraught with grave danger both to the state of Israel and to the Zionist movement.”

The new group–of which Benjamin G. Browdy is chairman, Abe Goodman and Milton Lukashok, vice-chairmen, and Joe Greenleaf, secretary–pointed out in its statement that in view of the situation that has developed since the national U.J.A. conference at Atlantic City last week, it is “forced to conclude that the recurrent efforts made by various groups both in the United States and in Israel to foist Mr. Montor via Mr. Morgenthau on the United Jewish Appeal in utter defiance of the expressed will of the Zionists of America, are endangering the success of the United Jewish Appeal for 1949 and are threatening to create a rift in the Jewish communities’ throughout the country.

“The Committee,” the statement continued, “is at a loss to understand why Mr. Morgenthau should lend himself to a stratagem which, if carried out, would not only jeopardize the success of the U.J.A. campaign for 1949, along with the great humanitarian project of transplanting hundreds of thousands of displaced and uprooted Jews from the .European and Arab countries to Israel, but would bring discord to wide Jewish circles throughout the United States.

“Why Mr. Morgenthau, by his insistence on the re-employment of Henry Montor, should turn himself into a controversial figure responsible for a new divisive movement in American Jewish life, thus inviting the sharpest kind of criticism from those who bad put their greatest hopes in him, is beyond our comprehension,” the statement said.”