An appeal to the United States Government to include Israel “among the nations within the mutual security system so that she may be granted military aid and be linked in America’s collective security arrangement,” was voiced here last night at the concluding session of the four-day 42nd annual convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. The plea was included in a resolution adopted by the 2,500 delegates urging the U. S. to “strengthen Israel as an outpost of democracy and a bulwark against Communism.”
The convention adopted a $9,000,000 budget for the 1956-57 fiscal year to maintain Hadassah’s health and medical network in Israel, the Youth Aliyah and American activities. The major expenditures forecast in the budget are $3,150,000 for the Hadassah Medical Organization; $2,100,000 for Youth Aliyah; $1,000,000 for the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center; $700,000 for the Jewish National Fund, and $600,000 for vocational training programs in Israel. Dr. Miriam Freund of Ossining, New York, was elected Hadassah’s tenth president, succeeding Mrs. Herman Shulman.
The resolution, introduced by Mrs. Rose Halprin, Hadassah’s Zionist affairs chairman and only woman member of the Jewish Agency executive, said such a step would give “practical expression to the Middle East plans adopted by both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which indicate a bi-partisan awareness of Israel’s danger, and would serve as an American commitment to prevent a renewal of hostilities against Israel.” The resolution stated also that “Hadassah views with apprehension the threatened intrusion of Iraqi forces into Jordan, recalling that Iraq was one of the Arab states which made war against Israel and is the only one which never concluded an armistice agreement with her.”
Another resolution urged the United States to combat intensified Communist propaganda in the Middle East by formulating “a well planned policy designed to raise the standard of living of the peoples of the Near and Middle East so that they may be helped to understand the benefits and responsibilities of freedom, and be encouraged to seek freedom for themselves.”
A third resolution asked the United States Government “to insist that as part of any settlement of the Suez Canal controversy, Israel shall have the same rights as all other nations. Any other course of action would legalize discrimination and cut at the very roots of international justice.”
Michael Comay, Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, told the final banquet session that his nation’s army was “a formidable fighting force.” He emphasized that no “Arabarmy or any combination of Arab armies can put Israel out of business.” At an earlier session, Cecil Hyman, Israel’s consul general in New York, praised Hadassah’s vocational education program, asserting that this effort was providing Israel’s newcomers with necessary skills “to build a modern progressive state.”
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.
