News Brief

The assertion by Eliahu Dobkin in Jerusalem that the ORT claimed it does 70 percent of the work actually being performed by the Jewish Agency was termed here today as “nonsense” in a statement issued by Dr. Aron Syngalowski, executive chairman of the World ORT Union. The statement reads:

“In connection with mention of the ORT during the declarations made at the Jewish Agency’s press conference in Jerusalem concerning the establishment of a Central Licensing Committee by the Agency, we wish to point out that the understandable reasons for the appointment of this Committee bear no de facto relation to the activities of ORT, which receives its funds from the various united Jewish appeals. Since ORT did not and will not undertake special fund-raising drives for its work in Israel, it has in no way contributed to the reasons underlying the present endeavors to replace the disjointed variety of campaigns by some orderly arrangement.

“The assertion that, in its propaganda, ORT has claimed 70 percent of the Jewish Agency’s achievements as its own, is nonsense. Seventy years of ORT work for Jewish vocational training in the Diaspora constitute ample grounds for the supposition that most qualified artisans immigrating to Israel during the past decades were trained in ORT institutions. This, however, evidently refers to ORT’s work outside of Israel. Nevertheless, ORT has never made use of this supposition, mentioned by me in a conversation with Premier Ben Gurion, for any propaganda purposes connected with fund-raising campaigns.”