Declaring that “the gap between our income and our needs is tragic,” Jewish Agency Treasurer Arye Dulzin warned delegates attending the second annual Jewish Agency General Assembly here today of fateful consequences for Israel if fund-raising around the world is not even more successful in the future than it has been in the past. Dulzin presented the Assembly with the Jewish Agency’s proposed record 1973 budget of $470 million but he said it fell well short of actual needs which he estimated at closer to $785 million for the year.
He said the 1973 budget, which includes about $60 million unspent from last year’s budget of $405 million was only “provisional.” The largest budget item–immigrant housing–amounts to $119 million, a cut of $30 million from the previous budget, Dulzin said. But the arrival of 70,000 new immigrants in 1973 will require between 14-15,000 new housing units while the Jewish Agency’s budget has room for only 78000 units, forcing the government to come up with the rest, he said.
Another major item–immigrant absorption–amounts to $67 million, a $10 million increase over last year, intended to meet the increased immigration largely from the Soviet Union. However, Dulzin said, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews may come to Israel in the next decade, accelerating Israel’s financial crisis. He expressed doubts that Israel was preparing itself properly for this anticipated influx. “We will need $10 billion in the next ten years or, God forbid, we will fail.” Dulzin said.
ISRAEL NEEDS ALIYA
The Jewish Agency Treasurer criticized “a certain atmosphere that has prevailed in Israel in recent months that expresses itself in the belief that aliya is too costly a burden for the society.” He said many Israelis asked why the immigrants are given so much, but don’t appreciate fully how much the economy needs aliya. He cited statistics showing the contributions made by immigrants to the labor force and the gross national product during the last two years.
Other items on the proposed Jewish Agency budget included social welfare, $31.6 million, up more than $3 million from last year; health services, $21.6 million, a decrease of over $12 million from last year’s budget; higher education, $68.5 million, a drop of some $4 million; youth care and training, $26.6 million, an increase of some $9 million.
Additional budget items include absorption in agricultural settlements, $45.1 million, up some $12 million from last year; and general administration and services; $3.2 million, compared to $2.6 million last year. Dulzin urged the delegates to strengthen their fund-raising efforts by enlarging the number of donors. He said that only 5000 contributors comprised 50 percent of the total amounts raised by the UJA in its last campaign. (Other stories P. 3.)
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.
