Sharp denunciation of Moscow’s charges against Zionism, made in the Soviet newspaper Trud–which also alleged that Israeli diplomats had recruited Soviet Jews for anti-Soviet espionage–was voiced here today by Moshe Sharett, chairman of the Jewish Agency executive.
Addressing a press conference, the Jewish Agency leader ridiculed the Trud assertions that Zionism was a “reactionary movement, pledged to the service of imperialism.” He stressed that Zionism in fact was a movement of rescue of masses from the perils of annihilation and of their liberation from the plight of inferiority; The Zionist movement, he pointed out, had transformed those it had saved “into a people subsisting by its own toil, creating economic and cultural values and shaping its own fate.”
He asserted that Zionism was “a free national movement of a small people which by its own self-reliant efforts has achieved great things and has repeatedly in its history mustered moral courage to stand up even to the mightiest of the world which its purpose did not suit their policy or regime.”
“It was pointless to try to disprove in detail the false allegations in the Moscow newspaper about Jewish Agency immigration offices abroad,” Mr. Sharett said; He asserted that immigration personnel operated openly and that the humanitarian quality of their work was “patent to all.”
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.
