Israel Helps Understanding Between Jews and Non- Jews, Publisher Says

The struggle of Israel for survival and for rehabilitation of its desert areas has done “as much as anything else, perhaps more than anything else, to build an area of common ground and understanding between Jews and non-Jews in Canada and the rest of the free world,” John Bassett, Jr., publisher of the Toronto Telegram, one of Canada’s most influential newspapers, said here last night.

Addressing a B’nai B’rith banquet where he was presented with the organization’s Humanitarian Award, Mr. Bassett asserted that thousands of Canadian non-Jews had been “thrilled and exhilarated by the national history of Israel during the past ten years and, of course, more particularly during the past ten months.” The world, he continued, had been “treated to the example of a tiny nation struggling for survival,” the inhabitants of which have found depths of strength within their own souls and have drawn from their own reserves of faith “to turn the desert into a wasteland and, when necessary, dropped the hoe and picked up the rifle to defend their life and country.”