Moshe Rivlin, director general of the Jewish Agency, expressed serious concern last night that the Jewish population in Galilee may remain a minority because the Agency was unable to provide the industrial plants and educational facilities necessary to increase Jewish settlement there because of lack of funds.
Rivlin, addressing members of a United Jewish Appeal study mission headed by Leonard Strelitz, of Norfolk, Va., said the Agency was currently unable to meet those needs because last year’s fund-raising goals in the U.S. were not reached while prices in Israel continued to soar.
He said it was impossible for the government to assume the Jewish Agency’s responsibilities because the government was already spending a third of Israel’s gross national product on defense, a proportion unequalled even by Britain at the peak of the German blitz in World War II. “If you don’t raise the money there is nobody else to give it,” Rivlin told the 150 UJA mission members.
He said the future of Galilee was an especially serious problem because the settlers there, particularly those in the 37 settlements along the Lebanese border, are “worried” by current events in Lebanon that “could effect their lives tomorrow.” So far, shellings and terrorist infiltration have not caused the Galilee settlers to pack up and leave, Rivlin said, but Israel’s goal is to create a Jewish majority in that region and that can only be done by providing jobs, schools and security.
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.
