JNF Says Criticism of Its Operations Was Inaccurate and Misleading

Spokesmen for the Jewish National Fund contended today that much of the criticism of its operations contained in the recently published report of the Zionist General Council’s (Action Committee) Comptroller was inaccurate and misleading. Shimon Ben Shemesh, director-general of the land reclamation and development agency, said, however, that the JNF would give serious consideration to recommendations in the Comptroller’s report and would correct procedures wherever possible. But “even after we do that, there will still be areas that require improvement,” he said.

Louis Pincus, chairman of the World Zionist Organization Executive, said today that he would study the report and would place it before a joint committee of the WZO and the JNF board of directors. Pincus said he “deplored” the allegedly one-sided treatment of the report by certain sections of the press-which, he said, could hurt the JNF’s reputation.

At a press conference here today, Ben Shemesh said that certain criticisms were valid but implied that the Comptroller’s report was not altogether-accurate in some of its charges. One charge was that the JNF had no criteria for paying the expenses of its emissaries who travel abroad and had. in fact, paid the travel expenses of wives who travelled with their husbands.

Ben Shemesh said two wives of emissaries had their travel expenses paid and the wife of a third received, in addition, per diem expenses. But he stressed that these were special cases and that the payments had been approved by the JNF’s executive committee. Theodor Hatalgi, the JNF’s public relations director, disputed the Comptroller’s charge that huge stocks of JNF publications were left in storerooms undistributed. Hatalgi said the JNF had produced the publications three years in advance as an economy move. “This was not a mistake, it was planned,” he said.