Eshkol Reveals U. J. A. Plan for Drive to Build High Schools in Israel

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol revealed tonight that the United Jewish Appeal is planning a capital fund drive to build a network of high schools in Israel and to correct an educational imbalance which he said “holds grave peril for our future.”

Speaking at a dinner tendered to him and Mrs. Eshkol at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by the United Jewish Appeal’s National Campaign Cabinet, Mr. Eshkol said that the additional UJA fund-raising task will serve to close the educational gap which exists in Israel between children of western origin and those from North Africa and other underdeveloped areas.

“Of every hundred children entering elementary school, the number whose direct or parental origin is Asian or African is 43. In high school, it drops to 25. At the university level it is only 12,” Mr. Eshkol said. “This situation holds grave peril for our future. We cannot–nor do we wish to–exist as a nation divided between those who have, and those who lack education. We must aspire to make free secondary education available to all our children according to their ability and desires.”

Because Israel must make vast financial expenditures to absorb a continuing and record flow of immigrants, to maintain an inordinately large military force to deter Arab aggression, and to conduct a huge development program in the Negev and the Galilee to provide living space for its new immigrants–“it would take perhaps ten to 15 years before Israel could assume full financial responsibility for providing free secondary schools and higher education,” Mr. Eshkol warned.

“We must therefore immediately find other ways, outside the government budget, of widening the access to post-primary education” he said. “For this we shall require the partnership of all those to whom Israel’s future is dear. I therefore welcome the additional task the UJA has undertaken. Now beyond your work for current immigration which I urge you to continue with all vigor, you are launching the Israel Education Fund. I wish your initial conference success, and I am confident that–when convened in September–it will adopt a practical program to help solve the problem.”

U. J. A. EDUCATION FUND CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN SEPTEMBER

Joseph Meyerhoff, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, stressed that the education drive would be conducted “in addition to UJA’s regular annual fund-raising campaigns for vital immigration and absorption needs in Israel and for programs of humanitarian aid to needy Jews in more than a score of countries overseas. The financing of these vast and ongoing programs of Jewish lifesaving and rebuilding will continue to be the UJA’s top priority and overriding responsibility.”

Max M. Fisher, the UJA’s associate general chairman, announced that the UJA plans to inaugurate its Israel Education Fund at a national conference which will be held on September 17 and 18 in New York City, with Mr. Abba Eban, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister as the principal speaker.

According to Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, the Appeal’s executive vice-chairman, the UJA’s decision to undertake this Israel Education Fund campaign came after a year and a half of intensive study and a number of on-the-spot surveys, including one by a group of outstanding American educators.

Pointing out that for more than 25 years the United Jewish Appeal has been the major American agency aiding immigrants to Palestine and Israel, along with refugees and distressed Jews overseas, Rabbi Friedman declared that it was “logical and fitting” that UJA should concern itself with helping to expand Israel’s educational opportunities.

“Many of the problems of education are an outgrowth of the fact that Israel has taken in one million two hundred thousand immigrants since 1948. American Jews and UJA have help make this immigration possible, and now they must see to it that so precious an asset as immigrant youth is given every opportunity to develop to its fullest potential,” Rabbi Frieman stated.

FLOW OF ARMS FROM RUSSIA TO EGYPT IS INCESSANT, ESHKOL SAYS

Mr. Eshkol’s address also covered Israel’s economic growth, the Jordan Water Project, Israel’s security and Egyptian arms race. “The flow of arms to Egypt is incessant. Egypt receives this aid from the Soviet Union on particularly easy terms. President Nasser now possesses missiles: air-to-air, sea-to-land, and ground-to-ground. He has developed the latter with the help mainly of German scientists, and although the guidance system for these missiles is apparently not yet perfected, they nevertheless present a danger which may become more grave in the course of time.

“It is indeed a somber thought that only 20 years after the Nazi holocaust, German scientists should hire their services to the country whose leader declares that war with Israel is inevitable,” he continued. “Often we are told by foreign observers that Arab threats should not be taken seriously. However, we cannot ignore these threats. We take them most seriously and must make every effort to insure that they can never be carried out.”