ZOA Convention Permits Kahane to Speak: Jdl Leader Calls for Aliya

The Zionist Organization of America last night became the first major Jewish organization to give a platform to Rabbi Meir Kahane, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Kahane, who turned up here uninvited and unexpected, addressed 1000 delegates at a plenary session of the ZOA’s annual convention for 20 minutes after ZOA president Herman Weisman told the convention, “It is essential to the democratic process to give a fair opportunity to be heard to those with whom we don’t agree.” Rabbi Kahane, who had requested the right to speak, discussed aliya-immigration to Israel-and his audience was attentive and courteous. He made no reference to Prof. Mikhail Zand, the Soviet Jewish emigre scholar who appeared at the ZOA convention as guest of honor at an earlier session and blasted the “violent tactics” of the JDL which he said were alienating Russian intellectuals sympathetic to Soviet Jewry’s struggle for emigration rights. The main point of Rabbi Kahane’s speech was that American Jews must emigrate to Israel because of an alleged rise of anti-Semitism in the United States. According to him, the future of American Jews is “bleak.” He contended that “In prosperity, those who dislike us are just quiet haters, but when life becomes hard-as it is today-they become active haters.” He warned that American Jewry faced the prospect of another holocaust. Requesting the floor in rebuttal, Weisman urged that those Jews who want to go to Israel do so, but he added. “We strongly reject the premise that the conditions and status of Jews in America are jeopardized, Jews, or any other group, have no legitimate basis for apprehension” because “the right to be different is too well entrenched in the national and constitutional life of the U.S.”

Weisman, who was re-elected by the convention to a second one-year term as ZOA president, said that offering Rabbi Kahane the right to address the convention “does not alter my attitude of disapproval of that for which Kahane has made himself famous…demonstrations which besides being illegal stimulate the false and harmful opinion that Jews sanction violence and disorder.” At an earlier session, Rep. Gerald Ford, House Minority Leader, said that the weapons Israel needs from the United States for its defense must be made available to it not by bargaining processes each year but through a durable long-range plan. “Whatever diminishes the long-range security of the United States diminishes the long-range security of Israel in the free world,” he declared. The Michigan Republican emphasized that President Nixon’s policy “is and will continue to be to strengthen the forces of peace and political stability throughout the Middle East and to reduce the risk of direct U.S.-Soviet military confrontation in that area.” He criticized “the inconsistency of some members of Congress who shout how they would strengthen Israel and then vote to weaken the United States” by opposing funds for advanced research on new weapons and for production line weapons. The ZOA announced a project to convert the agricultural high school in the Kfar Silver complex in Israel to a center of secondary education designed primarily to serve disadvantaged youths from North Africa and other Moslem countries. Weisman said the project was aimed at narrowing the gulf between Oriental and Western Jews in Israel and would help meet Israel’s needs for a growing force of skilled labor.

Leon Ilutovich, the ZOA’s national executive director, said the plan called for enlarging the campus to accommodate 1000 students instead of the present 400. He said it would also enable the ZOA to expand its summer programs at Kfar Silver for American youths. Another event at the convention was the presentation of the Jewish National Fund’s 70th anniversary silver medal to Dr. Emanuel Neumann, a past president of the ZOA. Abram Salomon reported that the Jewish National Fund has since 1901 planted 100 million trees, reclaimed 125,000 acres and built 1,500 miles of roads in Palestine and later Israel. Salomon, executive vice president of the JNF, also announced that Jewish leaders from 20 countries plus Israel will convene Oct. 17 in the Casino in Basel, Switzerland, where the JNF was initiated. In resolutions adopted at the closing session, the convention voiced opposition to any scheme initiated by the USSR or the Arab states at the United Nations which would “deprive Israel of the ability to defend itself and uphold its legitimate rights:” called on the President and Congress to provide Israel with the necessary weapons for its defense on a regular basis; opposed any interim arrangement to reopen the Suez Canal which would permit Egyptian forces to cross into the Sinai; stated its “complete accord” with Israel’s rejection of the Rogers Plan and the Jarring proposals “which seek to impose upon Israel a solution which would deprive it of its inherent rights.”