Thirty-four striking members of the crew of the Israeli vessel S.S. Haifa were brought today to Ellis Island to join 26 members of the crew of the Yafo pending deportation hearings on charges of entering the United States illegally. The Haifa is tied up at Baltimore.
The Israel consulate is providing the seamen with legal counsel at the hearings, while consular officials visited the detainees on Ellis Island today and yesterday to confer with them on the situation. The strikers from Baltimore were brought here in specially chartered buses so that they would not have to travel in police vans. The Haifa’s crew was discharged yesterday after they refused to return to work. At the consulate’s request the company which operates the Haifa agreed to pay wages due the seamen to their families in Israel, without delay.
At Baltimore, representatives of the Seafarers International Union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, told the Israeli strikers that the American union did not approve of their strike. They told the Israelis that the I.S.U. has a rule forbidding its own members to strike in foreign ports.
A new crew has been signed aboard the Haifa which is scheduled to be loaded today and sail for Philadelphia and New York for additional cargo. The Yafo. whose unloading is being completed today, will be moved to a Brooklyn pier tomorrow to take on machinery, foodstuffs and other supplies for Israel.
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.
