Mrs. Raya Jaglom of Tel Aviv, president of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) stressed at a WIZO conference here the important role of WIZO federations in the distant Jewish communities of Latin America in maintaining Jewish and Zionist education and in stimulating aliya.
Mrs. Jaglom spoke at the fourth WIZO Congress of Latin American Zionist Solidarity attended by 150 delegates from 12 Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and Curacao.
Since the founding of WIZO in 1920, she said, its guiding principle has been social development of women and children in Israel and Jewish education in the diaspora. Declaring “We cannot rest on our laurels,” she told the four-day conference May 9-13 that WIZO “must be ready to meet all the challenges in the social welfare and educational fields and build understanding of Zionism and Israel.”
Discussing the work of the 10 WIZO centers for Arab and Druze women in Israel, Mrs. Jaglom said that, in reaching out to those women, “WIZO has been very careful never to impose, but to wait until we were invited to offer our services. We take great pains to show every respect for Arab and Druze traditions.”
RIGHTS OF SOVIET JEWS
Mrs. Paulina Almosny, an official in the Venezuelan Education Ministry, urged all Latin American citizens, Jews and non-Jews, to fight for the reunification of Soviet Jewish families and for the right of every Jew in the Soviet Union to live as a Jew. She declared that “the human rights of Soviet Jews raise profound humanitarian questions that concern us all.”
Mrs. Evelyn Sommer, WIZO representative at the UN Economic and Social Council and UNICEF, said that “Israel and the Jews at the United Nations are very isolated.” She added that “This isolation has become a source of strength to us. We are more aware than ever of the historic relationship of the Jewish people and its homeland. We are secure in our cause and all the distortions that are being disseminated will not be able to change the truth and justice of our Zionist ideals.”
The conference resolved to send 1000 WIZO members to the 17th World WIZO Conference in Jerusalem next January. Other speakers at the conference were Victor Eliashar, Israel’s Ambassador to Venezuela and Dr. Marianne Becker, a professor at Caracas University.
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.
