A comprehensive three-year plan calling for the transfer to Israel of 650,000 Jews now living in 58 different countries was submitted today to the joint coordinating committee of the Israel Government and Jewish Agency by Itzhak Raphael, Agency immigration chief.
The plan will be reviewed at the forthcoming plenary session of the Jewish Agency. Approximately $100 will be needed to transport each Jew to Israel under the plan. Topping the list of countries from which Jews will be brought to the Jewish state during the next three years, according to Mr. Raphael’s timetable, are Iraq and Iran.
With the increase in Israel’s population from 655,000–when the Jewish state was proclaimed in May, 1948–to the present 1,125,000 the country’s “complexion” has changed, Joshua Shye, director-general of the Ministry of Immigration, declared at a press conference here last night.
Sixty percent of all immigrants arriving in Israel this year came from Aden and North Africa, he said, with the result that “Oriental communities in Israel now number 31 percent of the population, compared with 20 percent in 1943.” Since Eastern families are “more prolific” than Jews from the West, 60 percent of the population under 17 years of age belongs to the Oriental community, he revealed.
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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.
