Jewish Agency Chairman Louis Pincus has urged that the Absorption Ministry should not add on new functions that now belong to other ministries and the Jewish Agency. The responsibility for absorption rests with the Absorption Ministry, Pincus told a Labor Party study group at Beit Berl a few days ago and “there is no room to talk of returning it to the hands of the Jewish Agency.”
He assailed the Zionist General Council committee that recommended last month stripping the Absorption Ministry of its absorption functions and turning them over to the Jewish Agency. “…whoever wants this does not know what he is talking about,” Pincus declared. The Council has not yet decided on accepting the committee’s proposal.
Pincus also questioned the wisdom of a suggestion by the resigning director general of the Absorption Ministry, Hillel Ashkenazi, calling for the transfer of the running of absorption centers from the Jewish Agency to the ministry. The immigrants’ first steps in the country, Pincus said, should be guided by the Jewish Agency and, therefore, it should retain the direction of the absorption centers. He added that the coordination between the Jewish Agency and the government on immigration and absorption matters made it unnecessary for any joint “authority” of the Agency and the Absorption Ministry to be implemented, as has been suggested in the past.
Ashkenazi said last week that he submitted his resignation out of frustration at not being given the resources to carry on his work. “I think there is a growing gap between the responsibility of the (Absorption) Ministry and its authority,” the 39-year-old civil servant told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said that while his ministry was expected to provide housing for new immigrants it was not given the financial means or the manpower to perform satisfactorily Ashkenazi said he planned to leave his post in a few weeks to practice Jaw.
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.
