Prime Minister David Ben Gurion asserted last night that Israel was still surrounded by enemies hoping not only to destroy the Jewish State but also to throw the Jews of Israel into the sea. He declared also that peace for Israel was no nearer now than it was ten years ago. despite Israel’s continual readiness to discuss peace terms with the Arabs.
Addressing the 350 delegates to the International Israel Bond Conference at the closing session, the Prime Minister repeated what he considered Israel’s four principal tasks: security, immigration, conquest of the desert, and making Israel a world center of learning and science.
He again expressed his hopes that in the future, East European countries would permit the emigration to Israel of Jews in the hundred of thousands. He said that when this happened, the integration of these immigrations would represent the greatest challenge to world Jewry.
The Prime Minister rejected the “prevailing idea” that the Middle East was “only Arab,” asserting that “there are peoples in the Middle East who are not Arabs and their number is greater than that of the Arabs in the Middle East.” He said that the time was not far off when Israel would gain friends from among the non-Arab Middle East countries “whose strength is greater than that of all Arab countries.”
The delegates, in a unanimous resolution pledged to raise an additional $50,000,000 through Israel bond sales during the remainder of 1958.
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.
