American Jewry Gave Half of $20,000,000 Raised Throughout World for Keren Hayesod

Of $20,121,980 received by the Palestine Foundation Fund (Keren Hayesod) from April 1st, 1920 to the end of last year, Jews in this country contributed more than half, $10,976,970, is a statement contained in an announcement issued yesterday, that the tenth anniversary of this fund, the purpose of which is to finance the economic and agricultural rebuilding of Palestine, will be celebrated in Jewish communities throughout the world during all of next November. Other countries that have made large contributions to the Palestine Foundation Fund are: South Africa, $1,505,320; Germany, $982,505; Roumania, $877,65; Great Britain, $875,275; Poland, $820,500 and Canada, $737,070.

The Palestine Foundation Fund was organized in London in 1920, and is now the chief financial instrumentality of the Jewish Agency for carrying out its program for the development of Jewish life in the Holy Land. Oscar Wasserman, president of the Deutsche Bank in Berlin is chairman of its Board of Directors and among the American members of the Board are David M. Bressler, and Dr. Solomon Lowenstein. Contributions to the Palestine Foundation Fund are being obtained in this country by the Allied Jewish Campaign, which is seeking to raise $6,000,000 from American Jewry for the aid of stricken Jewry in Eastern Europe and Palestine.

During the first nine years of its existence, the Palestine Foundation Fund has invested about one-third of its income, $6,055,000, in fostering the agricutural settlement of Jews in the Holy Land, and since its inception has, in part, founded and maintained 70 farming colonies there with a total population of 11,000 souls. To the end of September last the Fund expended $1,775,000 for facilitating and regulating Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Urban development of Palestine is another branch of the Foundation Fund’s activities in which it had invested at the end of last year $3,947,940. Through its budget for public works, it has enabled many of the towns that have sprung up there during the past decade and more to build new roads and install other civic improvements. Credits are granted by it through its Labor Department to urban cooperative groups to finance industrial enterprises. Through its General Mortgage Bank it encourages house building. It is a large investor in the Palestine Electric Corporation which owns power stations in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Tiberias, and is presently constructing a central power station on the Jordan River, which, it is believed, will become an important factor in the development of Jewish industry there, and in the irrigation of the citrus plantations and vineyards. It is a large investor, also, in the Palestine Mining Syndicate, which is exploiting the mineral and chemical resources of the Dead Sea.