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Israel Can Get Marshall Plan Aid if It Asks for It, Clay Hints; Upa Board Reorganizing

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The national board of the United Palestine Appeal is now in the process of reorganization and the first meeting of communal and organizational representatives who will compose the new board is scheduled for next month, Ellis Radinsky, executive director of the U.P.A., reported here late last night just prior to the conclusion of the organization’s national parley. Mr. Radinsky revealed that 17 communities have already named their representatives to the board and that 48 of the 124 members of the body will be nominated directly by local welfare funds.

Gen. Lucius D. Clay, former American military governor in Germany, hinted that Israel could receive Marshall Plan aid if it requested it. He also urged the delegates to continue their efforts in behalf of Israel, commending the Jewish state on its humanitarian goal of absorbing all the persecuted Jews of the world. Major General John H. Hilldring, former member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, endorsed Israel’s stand on the Jerusalem issue as “a just and righteous attitude.”

Berl Locker, chairman of the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem who arrived Friday from Israel, told the conference that Israel expects to double her present population of 1,000,000 within the next five years. “It lies in your hands, through the U.J.A., whether this venture shall succeed or fail,” he added. Mr. Locker reported that “the 100,000 Jews of Jerusalem will never consent to be severed from their national homeland.” He warned that Israel’s immigration and up building program could end in catastrophe, not only economically, but perhaps militarily, unless aid from the U.S. is forthcoming.

Daniel Frisch, president of the Zionist Organization of America, denounced the “habitual enemies of Israel” who, he charged, have launched “a flank attack on the Zionist movement through misrepresentation of the relationship of American Jewry toward Israel.” Virtually the entire Jewish communities of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have moved to Israel and at least half of the Jews of Czechoslovakia and Turkey will be in Israel by the end of 1949, Dr. Israel Goldstein, American member of the Jewish Agency executive, reported.

Robert R. Nathan, head of the economic department of the Agency executive in America, who has just returned from an economic survey of Israel, emphasized that Israel presents a sound basis for future development and offers great possibilities for foreign investment. Other speakers at the parley included: Mrs. Rose Halprin, president of Hadassah; Rabbi Max Kirshblum, executive vice-president of the American Mizrachi Organization; Charles Ress, president of the Palestine Foundation Fund, and Jacob Sincoff, associate treasurer of the U.P.A.

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