Resolutions demanding that the new Soviet leadership revise anti-Jewish policies in Russia, and protesting the continued activities of West German scientists in Egypt’s weapons production, were adopted today at the opening session of the 41st annual convention of the National Committee for Labor Israel.
The 2,500 delegates and guests from all parts of the United States and Canada will, during the four day convention, map plans for increasing aid to the pioneering forces, new immigrants and youth of Israel. The committee raises funds in the United States for the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation.
The resolution on Soviet Jewry cited the “bans on Jewish cultural and communal institutions” and “anti-Jewish agitation in the Soviet press” and the publication of anti-Semitic books by Soviet State publishing houses. It charged Moscow with discrimination against Jews in the Soviet diplomatic corps, malicious featuring of Jews in the role of economic transgressors at state trials, and protested the denial to Soviet Jewry of the right to maintain contact with Jewish organizations abroad or to participate in international Jewish conferences.
The resolution called for an end to the Soviet ban on Hebrew, restoration of Yiddish theaters, newspapers and facilities for teaching in Hebrew and Yiddish; permission to Soviet Jews to set up a nationwide organization for such activities; an end to closing of synagogues, and permission to establish a central religious authority, “a right permitted other faiths” in Russia, and “the removal of the malicious ban on matzoh.”
The resolution also demanded facilities for rabbinical seminaries, the right of Soviet Jews to maintain normal contacts with Jews in other countries, and the right for Jews to emigrate to Israel and to reunite with their relatives there. “Until such steps are implemented, we shall not desist from voicing and pressing our protests,” the resolution stated. “We shall not stand mute witness to the cultural genocide of the second largest Jewish community in the world.”
The resolution on West German scientists expressed “deep disappointment that the West German Government has not yet taken steps to force” the scientists to end their work on advanced weapons for the Nasser regime. The resolution demanded “unreservedly and unconditionally that the German Government should cease offering excuses and pass legislation that will deprive the German scientists in Nasser’s employ of their German citizenship, and penalize them in other ways.”
The delegates, in another resolution, hailed the assistance of the Johnson Administration to Israel, but criticized the State Department’s policy “of treating Nasser as a loyal ally of the free world and as a force for stability in the Middle East.” The resolution added that “as long as Nasser and his Arab allies can with impunity threaten Israel, aggressors everywhere feel emboldened in threatening their peaceful neighbors.”
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.
