A more than doubling of the population of Israel during the next 25 years from three million to seven or eight million people was urged by Leon Dulzin, acting chairman of the World Zionist Organization, in an address today at the National Board Meeting of the American Zionist Federation. Speaking at the conclusion of the two-day conference of the 700,000 member coordinating organization of the 13 American national Zionist groups, Dulzin said that this is the outstanding challenge now facing Jewry both in Israel and throughout the world.
Declaring that Israel’s population had grown five-fold from 600,000 to three million in its first 25 years of Statehood, he said: “This increase of population, as large as it may seem at first hearing, is attainable. It will require three factors: personal aliya. Increasingly large contributions to provide such emigration from the United States and the other countries of the diaspora, and Improved absorption methods in Israel”
Noting that some 35,000 or more Soviet Jews have emigrated to Israel during the past few years, the world Zionist leader said that many of Russia’s two or three million Jews may be expected to emigrate, if allowed, during the coming quarter century, “In addition to the Russian Jews,” he said, “aliya from America and the other countries of the Western world must be increased. There is also a large number of North Africans, recently settled in France, who may wish to go to Israel. Zionism is the Jewish movement of liberation, and it is up to all Zionists, including the American movement that has played so important a role in the creation and development of Israel, to participate in this physical growth of Israel.”
Dulzin, noting that the Yom, Kippur War was a traumatic shock to both the government and the people of Israel, said that in “the long run the lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War will be helpful to the country. We must make such adjustments as are necessary to the creation of a peaceful accommodation between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This is not a simple problem, and it cannot be done by the waving of a magic wand. Serious thought, and cooperative action, must be worked out that will satisfy the moderates in Israel who subscribe neither to a violent anti-Arab nor overly pro-Arab solution.”
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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.
