A powerful plea for increased aid to Israel by American and Canadian Jewry was voiced here tonight at the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds by Max M. Fisher, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal. He called for a minimum of $75,000,000 to be given by Jews in the U.S. to the U.J.A. in 1967, which is $1,000,000 more than the sum expected to be raised in 1966.
Mr. Fisher, who just returned from Israel, as head of a mission sent by the U.J.A. to study conditions on the spot, presented a dramatic picture on the latest developments in Israel to the more than 1,000 top Jewish communal leaders from all parts of the United States and Canada attending the five-day Assembly. He said that “suddenly,” after a dozen years of economic boom, Israel was now facing arising unemployment with 50,000 unemployed already, while thousands more expected to be unemployed before the end of this year.
“Suddenly — along with the unemployment — for the very first time in years, there is hunger in the land among the section of the population which is economically weakest,” he said. “That section, of course, is the very one about which we are most concerned because it is largely made up of new immigrants whom we brought there.”
Declaring that “something drastic has to be done about it,” Mr. Fisher told the Assembly: “At least a quarter of a million people — one out of every five of the million and a quarter immigrants whom we helped bring to Israel — must be considered ‘unabsorbed.’ To understand what ‘unabsorbed’ means, one has to see it. It means suffering for old people, deprivation for little children, growing juvenile delinquency, and growing frustration, bitterness and isolation for large numbers of adults,” he said.
ISRAEL’S MOUNTING ECONOMIC PROBLEMS SEEN BURDENED BY DEFENSE CRISIS
The U.J.A. leader emphasized that in addition to border tension, unemployment, deprivation and the absorption crisis, Israel’s leaders were confronted at every turn with tremendously difficult situations “for which they must make agonizing — and even impossible — decisions.” This, he said, was particularly true for the Jewish Agency, which meets the needs of Israel’s newcomers and is the main beneficiary of the funds provided by the U.J.A. for overseas aid.
Mr. Fisher also spoke of Israel’s defense problem. Citing the latest terrorist acts by Arab infiltrators, he predicted Israel’s defense budget was not likely to see any cutback in 1967 or in the foreseeable future.
Irving Kane, chairman of the CFJWF Overseas Committee, addressing the Assembly, said that he considered the most important problem to be faced in 1967 the need to speed up the transition from immigrants to full citizens of Israel, the change from dependency to self-support. “Almost a quarter of the Jews in Israel today need some form of aid,” he said. “They are not only non-contributors to the national economy but are a drain upon it, a serious drain on the nation’s economy and a source of cultural and social conflict.”
Mr. Kane suggested that surveys should be undertaken immediately to separate out absorption problems which have been bunched together so that appropriate solutions can be developed for them and to enable Israel to get on with its “monumental job” of social engineering. “1967 can be and should be a very different year in overseas aid from the last 20 years,” Mr. Kane said. “It can be one of the most constructive years in the history of our aid,” he emphasized.
High on the agenda of the CJFWF Committee on Overseas Services, Mr. Kane reported, was the initiation of the discussions among the United Jewish Appeal, the United Israel Appeal and leaders in the United States of agencies aiding higher education in Israel to deal with the problem of proliferation of appeals.
The five-day conclave will consider tomorrow such matters as issues and priorities for federations in the next few years, Jewish participation in public welfare programs, overseas needs in European areas, the personnel crisis in Jewish communal agencies, and related problems.
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.
