Brig. Yigal Allon, the Israel Minister of Labor, said today that Israel had to create new basic industries to meet her requirements for military goods and make her independent of foreign sources.
Addressing the 70th jubilee convention of the Zionist Organization of America, the onetime Israeli chief of staff said Israel could not rely on foreign sources for supplies essential in emergencies. That, he said, was one of the “bitter lessons we must derive from our six-day war.” The reference was to the embargo laid down by France which had been Israel’s principal source for military supplies.
“It is necessary now,” Gen. Allon said, “for Israel to transform her basic industries to make her independent of foreign sources for these supplies. We must attain a stage where we are independent in these supplies.”
Gen. Allon called on Americans to increase their investment in Israeli industry. He noted that Israel itself was now investing large sums in the areas it had liberated in last month’s war. “Israel.” he stated, “must also invest money in reorganizing its army to face new technological developments. so that our fighting force becomes an army of the Seventies.” The Labor Minister also called for new immigration into Israel, saying “what we lack most is Jews.”
Leon Dultzin, head of the Jewish Agency immigration and absorption department, told the convention that the Agency accorded immigration the “utmost priority” and envisaged the arrival of between 15,000 and 20,000 families in the next 12 months. He stressed the need for skilled and professional immigration and described a program of incentives being offered skilled and professional immigrants. Several speakers, Americans residing in Israel, said that better results could be achieved if their organization were consulted in preparation for the absorption of immigrants from the West.
Rabbi Simon Greenberg, vice-chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, said that Israel’s image “as a home for the persecuted” should be changed so that Americans would “view Israel as a challenge to the creative and visionary” impulses of all Jews.
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.
