Israel’s Political Parties Get Some $2.5 M Annually from Jewish Fund-raising Bodies Abroad

Israel’s political parties receive nearly $2.5 million a year from Jewish fund-raising bodies abroad, it was announced here today. Premier Yitzhak Rabin was reported to have been “surprised” to learn how little of the money was allocated to his Labor Party compared to what some other parties received.

The largest single recipient is the National Religious Party which gets nearly IL 5 million for its “Israel Fund,” while the two smaller Orthodox factions, Aguda and Poale Aguda, get IL 1.5 million between them, though neither are members of the World Zionist Organization. The World Confederation of General Zionists gets IL 2.4 million, some of which is funneled to projects of the Independent Liberal Party, while the Liberal wing of Likud receives a similar sum and Herut’s Tel Hai fund gets just over IL 2 million a year.

But Labor and Mapam, which comprise Rabin’s Labor Alignment, receive a total of IL 1.5 million which they share with Histadrut. Jewish Agency treasure Leon Dulzin explained to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that this money comes mainly from United Israel Appeal funds raised outside of the United States.

A PRACTICE FOR MANY YEARS

Dulzin said the Labor Alignment’s share seemed disproportionately small because Labor and Mapam benefit from the separate Histadrut fund-raising campaign conducted in the U.S. which brings in some $5 million annually. He said Histadrut and Labor were reluctant to drop the separate campaign because they considered it valuable from the political and international viewpoints inasmuch as it included non-Jews and trade union groups in the U.S.

Dulzin said the allocation of funds raised abroad to Israeli political parties was a practice that has been going on for many years. He said that in 1966 the parties and the Jewish Agency Executive had agreed to end the allocations the following year, but the Six-Day War intervened in 1967 and the fund-raising bodies, particularly in the U.S., insisted on the greatest possible unity in fund-raising. Because of that, the idea of letting each party to fend for itself was dropped, Dulzin explained.

Yosef Klarman, Herut’s representative on the Jewish Agency Executive, claimed that his party could raise more than its allocation in South Africa alone, but said it went along with the old system out of patriotic considerations. Nevertheless, Klarman said, he would continue to propose that each Israeli political party run its own fund-raising campaign abroad, stressing its own particular brand of Zionism. He said he believed that would be the most effective method to intensify Zionist activity abroad.