Although Israel has been making first-rate progress in its effort to achieve economic stability and independence, “there are hungry children in Israel” because not enough funds are available for programs of immigrant rehabilitation, settlement and integration, Dr. Giora Josephthal, treasurer of the Jewish Agency, declared on arrival here today to participate in the opening phase of the United Jewish Appeal’s 1954 nationwide campaign. He will also assist in the special drive by the UJA to raise a $75,000,000 loan from American Jewish communities to provide ready cash for the Jewish Agency which undertook heavy short-term obligations to meet the needs of Israel’s mass immigration.
Dr. Josephthal reported that there are more than 83,000 men, women and children “still living under primitive conditions” because every available dollar has been going for increases in the means of production. “The increase in productivity,” he declared, “has been made at the expense of social services.”
The lack of funds, he stressed, has also imposed serious hardships on thousands of new immigrants living in farms and settlements on Israel’s tense and dangerous frontier. However, Dr. Josephthal emphasized that the State’s drive toward economic stability has brought “positive and encouraging results,” citing a 40 percent decrease in the foreign currency trade deficit, a substantial increase in cultivated acreage and a large-scale expansion in agricultural output.
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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.
