The closing session of a country-wide Mapai conference today pledged the party’s assistance in implementing the government’s austerity program as well as in its plans to restore the country’s economy to a normal footing. The convention also called on all labor movements and institutions in Israel to dispatch several hundred emissaries to the immigrant camps to train the new arrivals for life in the Jewish state.
Mapai wants to carry out its pre-election pledge to establish a Socialist regime in this generation, yet it appreciates the fact that with present mass immigration, absorption of the newcomers would be impossible without attracting private capital from abroad, Premier David Ben Gurion told the parley.
Discussing the predicted austerity program, Dr. Bernard Joseph, Minister of Food and Supply, predicted the first stage would entail a saving of five million Israeli pounds the first year. He said the program would succeed if the public and especially the workers understood that the fate of the state was dependent on it.
Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan expressed disappointment that Jews in the Diaspora had not borne the brunt of the absorption of new immigrants, which had fallen on the shoulders of the Israeli community. He said that about $800,000,000 would be needed annually in order to absorb the proposed immigration of 200,000.
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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.
