The four-day annual convention of the National Committee for Labor Israel, attended by 2,500 delegates from all parts of the United States and Canada, closed here today with the adoption of a $5,000,000 fund-raising goal for 1959. A roll call of delegates brought $500,000 to the platform as a “pledge” on fulfillment of the full quota. Joseph Schlossberg was re-elected national chairman and Dr. Dov Beigun national secretary.
A resolution on peace in the Middle East noted that Israel had recently underlined once again its readiness to cooperate in helping the Arab refugees rebuild their lives. It called on world opinion to bring to bear on the Arab rulers the need to “act in realistic and reasonable ways that will lead to an early and constructive solution to this problem, which is one of the major roadblocks on the way to peace in the Middle East.”
Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, addressing the convention, said that Histadrut, Israel’s general federation of labor, is “piercing the walls of political hostility” erected around the country by its Arab neighbors. As an example, Mr. Sharett cited the three-month seminar on cooperative economy being conducted in Tel Aviv with delegates from 16 Asian and African nations in attendance.
Mr. Sharett, one of the founders of Histadrut, spoke of its role in Israel in the last decade. “Histadrut has acted as a bulwark for the rights of the common man in employment, housing and decent living conditions. At the same time, by harnessing the energies of its members and institutions to the vital tasks confronting the hard-struggling and rapidly developing state, it led them to subordinate their short-term interests to the supreme consideration of national wellbeing.”
Another convention speaker, Yaacov Herzog, Israel’s Minister at its Washington Embassy, paid tribute to the ties linking the Histadrut and the American labor movement, describing these links as “one of the cornerstones in the edifice of American-Israel friendship.”
Sen. Jacob K. Javits, who addressed the parley last night, urged United States sponsorship of a resolution in the United Nations to create an international resettlement agency to solve the Arab refugee problem. He also had called upon Washington to recognize Israel as a “strong ally of the free world” by providing it with military assistance under the terms of the Mutual Security Act.
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.
