The long and bitter battle over the continued functioning of Herut activist Rafael Kotlowitz as chairman of the Jewish Agency aliya department ended today when the Agency’s Board of Governors voted to remove him from the post. The vote was 36-6 with 12 abstentions.
Formally it means that he will no longer be chairman of that department but he will continue as chairman of the World Zionist Organization aliya department — until or unless otherwise decided by the WZO.
The breakdown between the two organizations — which in practice broadly overlap in personnel — is that the Jewish Agency deals with immigrants from lands of distress while the WZO deals with immigrants from free lands.
The move to oust Kotlowitz was led by American Board members representing the “non-Zionist” (fundraisers) section of the Jewish Agency. They claimed that Kotlowitz “could not communicate” with American Jewry.
The South African-born Kotlowitz, a lawyer by profession and a long-time Betar-Herut loyalist, tenaciously fought the move to oust him. Recently he obtained a temporary injunction from a Tel Aviv district court forbidding the Agency’s Board from appointing anyone else in his place. But, as Board legal aides pointed out, the injuction did not prevent the Board from ousting Kotlowitz.
Last summer, when the Agency’s Board made an inconclusive move against Kotlowitz, then-Premier Menachem Begin retaliated by boycotting a planned briefing session with the Board. Premier Yitzhak Shamir is scheduled to meet with the Board tomorrow, and Agency sources said today there were no signs that he intended cancelling.
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