Former Premier David Ben Gurion today took issue sharply with Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Henry A. Byroade for his recent advice to Israel not to think of itself as a center of world Jewry.
Writing in Davar, the labor daily, Mr. Ben Gurion insists that Sec. Byroade’s statement is the result of a lack of knowledge about the Jewish belief which, unlike other religions, holds that the Jewish nation has religious and historic ties with Israel and its revival.
Sec. Byroade’s conception of the Jewish nation appears to be copied from the new Russian Encyclopedia, Mr. Ben Gurion writes. Although it is unlikely that the State Department has learned from the Communists, he continues, it seems that it has taken its ideas from the ideology of Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, which favors the Communist conception about the Jews.
Neither State Department representatives nor Russian scholars are authorized to fix a definition of the Jewish nation and its links–historic and religious–with Israel, Mr. Ben Gurion points out in his article.
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.
