To the Editor:
I have read with surprise a statement in Arthur Hertzberg’s article, in your October issue, that “The Labor Zionists, though encouraging halutziut as a firm part of their traditional work, did not mention it at all in their declaration”—that is, in the declaration of the National Assembly for Labor Israel.
Since I had something to do with drafting the document referred to, it would be a source of chagrin to find that this particular item had been left out.
But on examining the text of the declaration I find it contains the following: “A great voluntary mobilization of the Israeli labor movement is necessary, to colonize waste places and devise forms for absorbing the refugees into the cooperative, dynamic structure of Israel. In this effort the manpower and skill of Jewry in the free democracies must play their part as halutzim, as they did in the military defense of Israel. With the aid of the United States Government, American Jewry in particular can carry out in Israel a practical implementation of President Truman’s ‘Bold New Program.‘” (My italics.)
The National Assembly’s statement also contains the following: “The establishment of the State of Israel makes possible the continued pursuit, on an unprecedented scale, of the Zionist aim of bringing to Israel those Jews who cannot or do not wish to remain in the Diaspora. This aim remains, as before, the responsibility of the whole Jewish people, and the huge task of providing the necessary finances and skills, and preserving the necessary conditions for its success, is a joint responsibility of the State of Israel and Jewry in other countries.” (My italics.)
Ben Halpern
New York City
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To the Editor:
Ben Halpern is too adept a debater not to be aware that, for all its technical correctness, his letter is a trifle disingenuous. As a matter of simple fact I must offer him and the other framers of the National Assembly’s declaration my regrets and apologies. What I should have written, in the allusion to their deliberations, was “The Labor Zionists, though encouraging halutziut is a firm part of their traditional work, mention it without great emphasis in their declaration.”
Nonetheless, the impasse about halutziut that I described briefly in the original article is still with us and the fundamental issue is being evaded. The text from which Mr. Halpern is quoting is much more eloquent in repeating time-honored re-dedications to economic aid for Israel and concern for refugees. Indeed the very artillery that he marshals is not quite precise in its aim. American Labor Zionism seems to envision a halutziut from this country parallel to the direct contribution of military effectives from the United States to Israel’s war of survival. If so, as Mr. Halpern has good reason to know, that effort was quite small and much criticized in Israel for that very reason. Israel will not be satisfied with that kind of halutziut.
Mr. Halpern quotes the phrase about bringing “those who do not wish to remain” in the Diaspora to Israel. This is precisely the issue. Certainly Zionism does not have to give assurances that it will aid anyone who decides for aliyah by his own choice. What its Diaspora segment must decide is whether actively to promote and lead a movement for complete exodus, as it is increasingly being called to do by Israel.
I shall not belabor the point by quoting again in this connection the recent and by now famous utterance of Mr. Ben Gurion, concerning his intention to promote a mass aliyah of at least the youth from democratic lands. This statement of the Prime Minister’s has incidentally recently been watered down in his behalf in an authorized explanation by Monroe Goldwater of the UJA. Surely, however, Mr. Halpern has read Dr. Nathan Rotenstreich’s article in the October issue of Jewish Frontier. Dr. Rotenstreich, as an Israeli Laborite, takes issue with Dr. M. M. Kaplan’s program speech at the National Assembly in question:
Most surprising is the fact that Professor Kaplan did not include among the distinguishing features of revolutionary Zionism its most essential element, precisely the idea of auto-emancipatoon. . . . This effort in essence involves the transfer of Jewrs from their present domiciles for it aims at altering the basis of their life in the most elementary sense, that is, altering its territorial base. Auto-emancipation and the withdrawal from the Diaspora are twin ideas. . . .
Here is a position clearly stated, the complete denial of the Diaspora and a call to organize an active dissatisfaction with it (“auto-emancipation”) leading towards emigration to Israel. The impasse before American Zionism is whether to accept or reject this reaffirmation of the Herzlían position—and a few careful words of encouragement to very small scale halutziut is in reality an evasion of the issue.
Arthur Hertzberg
Nashville, Tennessee
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