A record Youth Aliya population in Israel was reported and record immigration over the next 18 months was predicted by officials of the Jewish Agency addressing 1800 women at the 25th biennial convention of Hadassah-WIZO here over the weekend. Max M. Fisher of Detroit, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors, forecast that 100,000 newcomers would arrive in Israel between now and the middle of 1975.
Joseph Klarman, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem and head of the Agency’s Youth Aliya department, said Israel’s Youth Aliya population for this school year has reached a peak figure of 13,500, the largest number since the mass immigration of the 1950s.
He said the increase of 2500 children this year represented 2000 additional youngsters of disadvantaged background from the slum areas of Israel and 500 from the Soviet Union. In the course of the school year, the number of children from the USSR absorbed in residential settings such as boarding schools of Youth Aliya reached more than 2000, Klarman said. He reported that the Youth Aliya budget for this fiscal year starting April I will be $20 million compared to $15 million in the last fiscal year. He also reported that the contribution of Hadassah-WIZO this year will exceed $1 million.
Fisher told the audience that Israel now faces the most severe austerity since the formation of the State, owing to the dislocation caused by the Yom Kippur War. “The tragic war losses and the cost of providing for new immigration is beyond Israel’s capacity to meet,” Fisher said. “Due to these circumstances it is urgent for organizations like Hadassah-WIZO to assume an enlarged share of responsibility for these human needs,” he said.
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.
