Six hundred guests attending the opening dinner of the Joint Palestine Appeal for 1959 on Saturday night pledged 250, 000 pounds ($700, 000) to get the Anglo-Jewish campaign for Israel off to a whirlwind start. Within 24 hours of the opening of the campaign pledges reached a total of 700, 000 pounds ($1, 960, 000).
Sir Simon Marks, who was to have presided at the dinner but was unable to attend because of illness, made a contribution of 130, 000 pounds ($364, 000) in behalf of his family. Some contributions announced to the dinner showed a tenfold increase over last year.
Speakers included Israel Ambassador Eliahu Elath, Sir Francis Evans, former British Ambassador to Israel, and Rabbi Israel Goldstein of New York.
Mr. Elath denied that Israel would need additional land to absorb current or future waves of immigration, describing Israel’s expansion as “vertical and not horizontal–in depth and not in area.”
Rabbi Goldstein, in appealing for financial sacrifices to meet the needs imposed by the new immigration, told the assemblage that some were paying “a much higher price for the immigration from Eastern Europe–Iran’s and North Africa’s Jews who were already sitting on their valises, have had to renounce their imminent departure so as to enable the hard-pressed Jewish Agency to deal first with the urgent case presented by Rumania’s Jews who are threatened body and soul. “
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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.
