The 36th annual convention of Hadassah concluded here tonight with the adoption of a $7,035,000 budget and the adoption of a resolution opposing the internationalization of Jerusalem and supporting the plan proposed by Israel for United Nations supervision of the Holy Places alone without any interference in the affairs of the peoples of Jerusalem.
The convention also voted to raise $1,000,000 next year–in addition to the budget–as part of a special three-year building fund goal of $3,500,000 approved by the convention earlier for the erection of a new medical center in Jorusalem. Mrs. Samuel W. Halprin was reelected president of Hadassah for a fourth consecutive term.
Addressing a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria which climaxed the convention, Ambassador Abba S. Eban of Israel told the audience that “democracy must prove itself” to the masses in Asia not only as the agent of their freedom, but also as the instrument of their welfare. Israel, looking out beyond the frontiers of its own democratic revolution, asks itself whether its achievement may not have wider significance than we ever suspected ourselves,” he declared. “By our example we proclaim the capacity of a democratic system, even in the least promising and abundant conditions to assure to a nation its effective defense, its cultural revival, its social progress and the full dignity of constructive achievement. I believe that this is our chief service to democracy.”
Turning to the problem of Israel-Arab relations, Mr. Eban noted that the effort of the United Nations to effect a peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors had failed because of the Arab refusal to accept procedures laid down by the U.N. Palestine Conciliation Commission which looked toward a final peace effort.
“We regret that these governments should increase their original offense of making war by their new offense of refusing peace,” he stated. “Meanwhile we do not think that our colleagues in the United Nations will have much difficulty in assessing Arab claims which their authors will not put to the test of honest negotiation.”
He said that Israel’s foreign policy “has fixed ideals, but it has no fixed dogmas except that decision on each issue shall be taken on their independent merits. The one thing that a member of the United Nations should never surrender is its own freedom of judgment. In such freedom of judgment Israel has twice affirmed its support for the efforts of the Security Council to restore international peace and security in Korea.”
John C. Ross, United States Deputy Representative in the United Nations Security Council, charged that the “armed attack upon the Republic of Korea is part of a Soviet Communist plan of world domination” and questioned whether the “Soviet Union wants to live at peace” with the free world.
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.
