The seven Knesset members who are on a two-week visit to the U.S. at the invitation of Congress participated in numerous meetings during the last days of their visit with American public officials, Israelis and Jewish communal leaders and addressed meetings of Zionist groups.
Menachem Beigin, leader of the Likud opposition, told leaders of the Zionist Organization of America that Israel must not allow Syria to take over Lebanon “because it would be a direct threat” to Israel, Commenting on the UN anti- Zionist resolution, he said that the time is now favorable to state Israel’s case in the U.S. “to prove who the racists are,” Beigin noted that it has been a long time since a UN resolution whose purpose was meant to bring harm to Israel “has met with such adverse reaction in the media and in Washington.”
While the Likud leader welcomed U.S. aid, he said that “if we want to live our own life and have our own destiny we must change our own system of life economically and socially so that we will be less dependent on foreign aid.”
Chaika Grossman, Mapam Knesseter and leader and heroine of the Bialystok ghetto uprising, told some 200 people yesterday attending a Chanukah luncheon of the Americans for Progressive Israel-Hashomer Hatzair that the UN resolution is “a racist act, like a poison which drips slowly but obtains murderous results,” She noted that Zionism is the national liberation movement of the most oppressed peoples in the world and that “progressive elements always prevailed in it and prevented the movement from deteriorating into a chauvinist nationalism. Thank God we don’t have an Arafat among us.”
NINE-POINT PROGRAM FOR PEACE
Expressing a strong belief that it is possible to end that state of confrontation in the Middle East, Grossman offered a nine-point program to achieve this objective, it included negotiations in any form, direct or indirect; a plan for a final settlement with options left for a partial settlement, which would include Syria and Jordan; the establishment of a Palestinian leadership in the administered territories; readiness to negotiate with any Palestinian organization which declares its recognition of the existence and sovereignty of the State of Israel and sincere and thorough preparations for a Geneva conference in which a Palestinian delegation might take part within the delegation of another Arab country.
Other points included; the possibility of establishing a confederation between the State of Israel which would remain Jewish, and between a Palestinian state–either Jordan or independently Palestinian–which would insure access to holy place as of all religions and would eliminate connotations of religious and historical patrimony over the land; Israel’s final frontiers to be based on the 1987 lines with slight territorial changes, and not massive annexations and international guarantees by the U.S., the Soviet Union and the UN to assure Israel’s security.
Other members of the delegation included Knesset Speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu, Yitzhak Ben Aharon, Zerach Warhaftig Yosef Tainir and Ari Ankorian, Yeshayahu addressed the National Committee for Labor Israel, the Labor Zionist Alliance and attended the 44th General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in Miami Beach, Fla.
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.
