From the remote mountain villages of Persian Kurdistan, 2,000 Jews have already come to Israel and this figure will soon be doubled, Yitzhak Raphael, Jewish Agency immigration chief, reported this week-end. Eighty percent of all immigrants who will come to Israel in the next few months will be Jews from Iran, Iraq, Poland and Rumania, he added.
Most of the 150,000 Jews in Iran live in extreme poverty and wish to go to Israel, Mr. Raphael said. Two thousand Iraqi Jews have already reached Israel, while the average monthly number of Iraqi Jewish immigrants is expected to rise to 4,000 soon, he continued.
The Agency official stated that neither the Jewish Agency for the Israel Government-Agency coordinating board has any intentions of curbing immigration to Israel. During the first six months of 1950, he said, an average of 12,000 Jews arrived in Israel, with all expectations that the monthly average will rise to 18,000. He anticipated a total immigration this year of 180,000. Mr. Raphael emphasized that the Agency’s immigration department will not wind up its activities in Germany “so long as candidates for immigration are to be found there.”
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