Committee Reports Shenker-gilboa Dispute is Not an Ideological One

The three-man committee set up to investigate the dispute between Avraham Shenker, head of the World Zionist Organization information and organization department, and Moshe Gilboa, one of his tow deputies, reported yesterday that the dispute was “not ideological, but personal.” The committee, headed by Keren Hayesod chief Ezra Shapiro, recommended that “an effort be made” for Gilboa to continue working in the department “subordinate to, and according to the instructions of Shenker.”

Shenker had asked that Gilboa be shifted because relations between them had deteriorated drastically, Gilboa had contended that the dispute stemmed from the leftist trends within the department, trends, which he could not accept. Shenker is a member of Mapam.

Informed observers with the WZO said an effort might be made to affect a “sulha” (peace) between the two men. But at any event, the committee had given Gilboa the broadest of hints that it did not accept his contentions and that he, as the junior man, must live with Shenker or leave.

NO MONOLITHIC INFORMATION

At a meeting with newsmen in Tel Aviv last week, Shenker said that while consensus guided Zionist information activity, the department functioned in a pluralistic manner because information campaigns had to be adapted to conditions in each country and there can be no monolithic information campaign.

At the same time he announced that his department was mounting a world-wide campaign to counter the anti-Zionist trends that have found expression at recent gatherings of Third World and unaligned nations at Mexico City, Lima and Kampala. Shenker mentioned the Labor Friends of Israel and the Conservative Friends of Israel in Britain who were called on to take an active part against the anti-Zionist campaign; the Zionist Information Month in France, which opened this week; and the scholars-in-residence project in North America.