Israeli Students Federation Defying Wujs Decision on Zionist Congress Election

The Israeli National Students Federation said today that it would participate in the World Zionist Organization’s census preliminary to the election of delegates to the next Zionist Congress even though the World Union of Jewish Students, with which it is affiliated, has decided not to do so. Moshe Amirav, chairman of the Israeli group, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the World Union’s decision stemmed from an “internal conflict about the Palestinians.” WUJS has challenged the Zionist Movement to include the establishment of a “Palestinian entity” in its program. Because it failed to do so at the last Zionist Congress in 1968, the World Union has refused to subscribe to the Jerusalem Program, adopted at that Congress. The Jerusalem program calls for the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel to Jewish life; ingathering of the exiles to their homeland which is Israel; strengthening the State of Israel; preservation of the identity of the Jewish people; and the protection of Jewish rights everywhere.

WUJS held an international conference at the Negev town of Arad last August at which it adopted a program making adherence to any Zionist plan contingent on the recognition of a Palestinian entity. In London WUJS recently decided not to take part in the WZO’s census or membership drive but left its affiliated national organizations free to do so if they wished. The dispute has generated bitterness in Zionist ranks. A Jewish Agency spokesman chided WUJS today. He said it was the students who insisted on a Zionist census in order to make the Zionist Movement “more representative and democratic” and recalled that the student delegation walked out of the last Congress until agreement was reached to base the next Congress exclusively on elections and to hold a census for that purpose. The spokesman said that 20 seats had been reserved for WUJS at the last Congress. He said that if they refused to affiliate they could not expect to send a delegation to the next Congress.