Conference Convened by Mrs Meir Adopts $360 Million Goal for 1973

The Conference of the Israel Bond Organization convened here by Premier Golda Meir today adopted a $360 million goal for 1973, slightly less than two-thirds of Israel’s $600 million development budget and slightly under the amount asked for by Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir.

Sapir confirmed that a large portion of the Bond proceeds would go toward aiding the absorption of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. He said he could not state the precise amount that would be earmarked for that purpose because it was difficult to project how many Soviet Jews would come to Israel this year.

Addressing the 160 Jewish leaders from the United States and Canada attending the Bond conference, Louis Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, stressed the need to aid immigrant absorption. He said that if Israel could not provide the newcomers with houses and jobs it would be “a joke” to say that Israel was a place where Jews could live by right.

The basic problem, Pincus said, was to adapt the Israeli economy to the type of Jews waiting to immigrate. He told the delegates that he had been opposed to the recent restrictions on the privileges and incentives granted immigrants but was oven ruled by the Finance Ministry. Pincus said that the restrictions represented an “appeasement” of circles here who argued the immigrant privileges were at the expense of the settled population.