Jewish Agency Plans to Integrate 5,000 More Volunteers from Abroad, Pincus Says

The Jewish Agency has prepared plans to integrate 5,000 more volunteers from abroad for service in Israel in addition to the more than 4,000 volunteers who have already arrived, Aryeh Pincus, chairman of the Agency executive, told a press conference here yesterday.

Mr. Pincus met today with leaders of industry, banking, agriculture and other economic sectors to arrange work for the volunteers. He also told a press conference that plans were being drawn up to absorb between 15,000 and 20,000 immigrant families from the western world.

He stressed the “wave of enthusiasm” which swept over the western world in Israel’s recent crisis and led 15,000 persons to volunteer for work in Israel. He said these individuals had already been approved by fitness boards and were expected in Israel. He reported that by the end of this June, 4,600 volunteers would be employed in 170 different places, ranging from settlements to garage work and reconstruction of the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus.

He noted that with the outbreak of the war on June 5, not only were large sums of money contributed to Israel but also that a very large number of persons Joined in the fund-raising. He said in the United States alone, persons in such fund-raising had increased by 300 percent.

(A spokesman of the Jewish Agency in New York stated today that reports published in the New York press that the Jewish Agency was paying the travel costs of all volunteers going to work in Israel are incorrect. “In fact, almost all of the over 4,000 volunteers from 32 countries throughout the world came to Israel at their own expense.” he said. “As far as United States volunteers were concerned, only a limited number of small loans were given in cases of exceptional need,” he stated.)