An enthusiastic audience of 16,000 tonight joined in an “All American Salute to Israel’s Pioneers” at Madison Square Garden. The event marked the beginning of the 40th anniversary year of the Israel Histadrut Campaign. During the past four decades, the Campaign has raised over $60,000,000 for a comprehensive program that now covers more than 70 per cent of the population of Israel.
Mrs. Golda Meir, Foreign Minister of Israel, was guest of honor at the fete. In presenting her, Joseph Schlossberg, president of the National Committee for Labor Israel, sponsor or the Israel Histadrut Campaign, called Mrs. Meir “one of the most brilliant women of the world, one of the outstanding personalities of our time. She is one of the people who has risen to leadership, not only in the State of Israel but in the arena of international affairs. She personifies the ideals of Labor Israel. She is a woman of valor. She is a simple woman in manner, an aristocrat in the battle for human dignity.”
Louis Segal, general secretary of the Farband Labor Zionist Order and a national vice-chairman of the Israel Histadrut Campaign, credited the generosity of the American people and the daring of Israel’s “founding fathers” for the rapid development of that country during the past 40 years. “Histadrut itself has grown from 6,000 workers in a few fields to nearly a million workers covering the entire spectrum of creative labor,” he stated. “Americans have been full partners in this process of performing miracles. We salute the pioneers of Histadrut–former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, the late President Izhak Ben-Zvi and other giants of the Jewish renaissance.”
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.
