Sapir: Welfare Benefits Will Not Eliminate Poverty; Other Measures Required

Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir told the Labor Party convention today that bigger welfare benefits will not eliminate poverty in Israel. “You can get rid of poverty by giving people an education, qualification for employment, a decent job and the possibility of acquiring a decent home to live in,” Sapir said. Yitzhak Ben Aharon secretary general of Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation, told the convention delegates that a “fat, satisfied labor movement” is not capable of feeling the hunger of the have-nots. He urged social action against economic inequities. Aharon denied that there was corruption in the labor movement but conceded that it had “some ugly aspects.” Aryeh L. Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency, claimed that “The Zionist socialists are the only ones capable of providing a viable ideological alternative to the alien doctrines now attracting so many young Jewish intellectuals in Western countries.”