U.J.A. Leaders Deny Report They Urged Six-month Suspension of Immigration to Israel

Julian B. Venezky, chairman of the National Campaign Cabinet, and Samuel Rothberg, chairman for initial gifts, of the United Jewish Appeal, denied yesterday that they had made a proposal in Israel last week that immigration be suspended for six months. The U.J.A. leaders returned by plane from the Jewish state on Saturday.

A New York Times dispatch from Tel Aviv published last Wednesday stated that the two leaders of the United Jewish Appeal had urged a temporary halt in immigration to Israel to give American Jews a “breather” in their fund-raising offorts for the U.J.A. “Any proposal for limiting immigration at the present time is unthinkable and highly dangerous,” the statement issued by Messrs. Rothberg and Venezky declared. “In conferences with leaders of the Israel Government and the Jewish Agency, we were told that the failure of American Jews to provide sufficient dollars immediately would create very grave difficulties for the entire country.

“We do not believe that the funds available at the present time through the United Jewish Appeal are adequate to meet the critical needs of a ‘now or never’ immigration that cannot be kept below 15,000 a month. If the Jews of the United States fail to act quickly, Israel itself will be overwhelmod and everything we have tried to build will blow up in our faces. We have seen the Jews from Iraq, Rumania, Poland and from other countries as they have been coming into Israel. We are convinced that our entire outlook must be changed and that the 150,000 immigration figure that was adopted early this year must be sharply revised upward.”