A plan for financing of the $150,000,000 project of Dr. Walter C. Lowdermilk for the irrigation and electrification of Palestine, ( the Jordan Valley Authority) was outlined here last night by Emanuel Neumann, Zionist leader, at a dinner tendered Dr. Lowdermilk at the Statler Hotel.
“I would visualize two steps, “Mr. Neumann said. “The first, is setting up a restitution commission to study the problem of financing the project in all its aspects, to gather all relevant information and to map out a program of restitution. The second, is the setting up under the auspices of the United Nations of a rehabilitation and resettlement trust as the financial instrument for effectuating these plans.
“This trust,” Mr. Neumann continued, “should take over and administer all such looted Jewish property to be gradually liquidated over a period of years and the proceeds to be used for the purpose described. Once such a trust is established, provisions can be made for temporary credit, secured by its holdings, so that the program of rehabilitation and resettlement might go forward.”
PLAN WOULD BRING PROSPERITY TO TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE IN NEAR EAST
Speaking at the dinner in his honor which was attended by government officials and prominent Jewish and non-Jewish leaders, Dr. Lowdermilk said that with the realization of his project, Palestine may well become the lever that will transform the other lands of the Near East. “Once the great undeveloped resources of these countries are properly exploited, twenty to thirty million people may live decent and prosperous lives where a few million now struggle for a bare existence, ” he emphasized.
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, speaking at the dinner, said that “Dr. Lowdermilk has written the epic of an unforgettable people reviving an unforgetting land,” and had also “demonstrated the amazing possibilities of Palestine, showing how it can be restored to productivity so as to absorb hundreds of thousands of new settlers.”
“But it is not the material prospects of the country which have attracted pioneers,” Silver stated. “Nor is it the urgency for finding new homes for refugees which will revive the land. The Jewish people is returning to rebuild Palestine because it has always loved that land and by rebuilding it, it rebuilds it’s own life. The Jewish people is investing it’s love and it’s hope in Palestine and thus the land is returning to it’s former loveliness and the people to it’s former stature.”
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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.
