Eshkol Says Israel Views Western Immigration As Vitally Needed

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol pledged today that the Israeli Government would view immigration from Western countries as a matter of major policy. Addressing the opening session of the 15th annual conference of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, Mr. Eshkol said that suitable “housing, mortgages and other loans and help should be offered to Western immigrants with a maximum of understanding and a minimum of bureaucracy.” If mistakes in this area have been made in the past, he declared, the Government will not shirk from investigating and rectifying them.

Conceding that it was impossible for Israel to compete with Western amenities or economic incentives, Mr. Eshkol said, however, that the Western newcomer had the right to expect that Israel bear in mind “the psychology of living of the society in which he grew and matured.” Western immigrants, he declared, “are vitally needed here for their technical skills and capital. We want them here as people with their democratic traditions and experience, their cultural resources and sense of national and civic responsibility. ” At the same time, he asserted, it was incumbent upon Israel to follow with sympathy efforts made on the American continent and in other Western countries to block the tide of assimilation.

Israel must become “Diaspora conscious, ” the Premier added, to the same degree that Jews outside Israel follow with sympathy every new development in Israel. “Let Israel and the Diaspora work in close and common accord,” he pleaded, “so that future historians will not be able to record — God forbid — that Jewry in our time created a state and lost a people.”

Premier Eshkol expressed the hope that the day would come soon when the Soviet authorities would freely permit all Jews who so wished to join their relatives and brethren in Israel.