A campaign to raise $51, 000, 000 in the next four months for Israel’s industrial and agricultural development through the sale of Israel Development Bonds was inaugurated here today at the National Leadership Conference for Israel Bonds which was attended by 400 Jewish community leaders from all parts of this country and Canada. Some $24,000, 000 has thus far been received toward the $75, 000,000 sales goal for 1954.
The campaign was launched in response to pleas–in person and through messages–from Israel’s political and economic leaders, including Premier Moshe Sharett, Finance Minister Levi Eshkol, Governor of the Israel State Bank David Horowitz and Ambassador Abba S. Eban. The parley also heard from Henry Montor and Julian B. Venezky, chief executive officer and chairman of the executive, respectively, of the bond drive organization, and from two delegations of American communal leaders who recently toured Israel.
Mr. Eban, who has just returned from the conference in Jerusalem, told the delegates that the military balance of power in the Middle East so laboriously achieved at the expense of Israel blood and treasure, was in mortal danger if the Arab states were strengthened militarily at this time. If this “precarious balance” were upset, he declared, “then issues of such profundity and urgency as we have never known since 1948 would again arise in their fullest urgencies and dimensions.”
U.S. POLICY BRINGS “FOREBODING” TO ISRAEL, EBAN SAYS
The Ambassador, underscoring America’s foremost role in helping establish the State of Israel and in helping it set its finances, economy and security on strong foundations, asked: “How is it that America should, for whatever purposes or justification, become an agent… in overthrowing this balance of power of which America was one of the chief architects and is one of the formal guarantors?” Outlining Israel’s accomplishments in every field of peaceful endeavor, Mr. Eban reported that a “sense of foreboding and impression of Israel’s undue isolation from the current pattern of regional and international security” hangs over the country, particularly in the border villages.
In a message to the parley, Premier Sharett called for an intensification of the drive to assure his country’s economic independence as a means of overcoming “changes in the balance of power in the Middle East foreshadowed by the policy of arming the Arab states.” Linking the success of the Israel bond drive to prospects for peace in the Middle East, he said: “By helping to render Israel impregnable, and by demonstrating faith in her future, it discourages evil designs, and promotes the prospects of constructive peace.”
Mr. Horowitz, Israel’s foremost financial expert, outlined the economic objectives of his country in his address to the Conference. He listed the “four main objectives of all economic policy in Israel” as:
“I. The transfer of large segments of Jewish population from the Diaspora into Israel; 2. Economic absorption and integration of this new population; 3. Transformation of this transplanted population according to the needs of the country; 4. Transformation of the country, and the expansion of its productive facilities by a large scale application of capital and skill.”
Notwithstanding many major problems, Mr. Horowitz indicated, Israel has made “great progress in the main objectives of its economic policy.” The number of gainfully employed doubled, he reported. The cultivated area in agriculture increased by 120 percent, and the irrigated area by 175 percent. Employment in industry increased from 67,000 in 1947 to 125, 000 in 1953. Industrial exports increased in 1953 by 80 percent over 1952. Total net investments from 1948 to 1954 amounted to $1, 300, 000,000 gross and $900, 000, 000 net, he stressed.
BOND APPEAL TO BE MADE IN SYNAGOGUES DURING HOLIDAY SERVICES
Mr. Montor emphasized that “only solid economic foundations can assure Israel the strength to defend herself against the dangers of attack.” He announced that Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai E. Stevenson, Trygve Lie, former Secretary-General of the United Nations; Bishop Bernard J. Sheil of Chicago; Governor Theodore R. McKeldin of Maryland, and other outstanding leaders would participate in the inauguration of Israel bond campaigns in various parts of the U.S.
Dr. Barnett R. Brickner, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, called upon Reform Rabbis throughout the United States to stimulate their congregations to respond to the Israel Bond effort during the forthcoming High Holidays. He was joined in this plea by Dr. Norman Salit, president of the Synagogue Council of America, and Rabbi Mordecai Kirshblum, president of the Mizrachi Organization of America, by the Hapoel Hamizrachi and by Rabbi David H. Hollander, president of the Rabbinical Council of America. A message by Israel Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog to religious leaders in the U.S. also endorsed the High Holy Day campaign.
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