About 50 percent of Israel’s needs will have to be mat by imports from abroad, even if plans for stepping up local production should be successful, Israeli Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan told the closing session of a country-wide conference of the Mapai, Israeli Labor Party.
The Minister said that funds saved through the austerity program would be invested in developing the country. He predicted that the government would be ready to exempt certain percentage of income from income taxes if it were invested in building. In order to assist in providing new housing, the government was negotiating with several capitalists who had expressed readiness to build several thousand apartments, he added. Jacob Potfosky, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, who attended the conference, was welcomed by Mrs. Golda Myerson, Labor Minister. He pledged the all-out assistance of organized Jewish workers in the U.S.
Eliahu Stone of Boston, the only member of the Zionist Organization of America who is attending the Zionist Actions Committee session in Jerusalem, today urged reconciliation between Dr. Abba Hillel Sliver’s group in the United States and the Jewish Agency executive from which Dr. Silver and Dr. Emanuel Neumann resigned. “Dimunition of the flow of funds would be disastrous for the Jewish state, whereas that removal of Drs. Silver and Neumann would be disastrous for the Zionist organization,” he declared.
WORLD-WIDE GENERAL ZIONIST PARLEY DISCUSSES CLEAVAGE
The threatened cleavage in the World Confederation of General Zionists arising out of the recent split in the General Zionist Party of Israel was discussed at the organization’s convention which adjourned here today. The sessions will be resumed in Jerusalem.
A committee consisting of Dr. Fritz Bernstein, General Zionist leader and Minister of Trade in the Provisional Government, Dr. Israel Goldstein, Agency treasurer, and Dr. Abraham Granovsky, head of the Jewish National Fund, was formed to determine whether the breach in the General Zionist movement in the Jewish state could ?e healed.
General Zionist delegates from overseas stressed the need for a union of the two conflicting factions. The situation here has been complicated further by the fact that one wing of the General Zionists has already merged with the Aliyah Hadasha and Haoeved Hazioni groups to form the Progressive Party of Israel.
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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.
