More than $83,000,0000 in Jewish capital has been brought to Palestine for investment in land development and new industries in the last two years, the Jewish Agency Executive revealed today in a report prepared for submission to the 21st World Zionist Congress, which opens here next week.
The report discloses that the flow of capital into the Holy Land has not been checked by the prolonged terrorism. Approximately $36,000,000 was brought to Palestine in 1937, while more than $47,000,000 came in 1938. The report also reveals that in the past four years Jews from all over world have spent about $15,000,000 in steamship tickets for Palestine. Of this sum, American Jewry provided an insignificant proportion.
Tribute is paid in the document to the great interest Jews and anti-Jews in America are taking in defending Jewish right in Palestine. Membership in Zionist organizations and affiliated groups in the United States, the report reveals, has increased from 110,000 to 150,000 in the course of the last two years.
The report deals at length with the general situation in Palestine during the last two years and with all phases of Jewish life there. It tells the story of the herculean Labor, under constant danger, that went into the upbuilding work; of the heroic sacrifices made by Jewish workers and defenders in laying the foundations for a new refuge for tens of thousands of Jews hounded out of Europe.
The document reveals how the Jewish National Fund has staked out claims, in the hilly, desolate region of Galilee, to 1,000,000 dunams (about 200,000 acres) which are to serve as a basis for settlement of 25,000 agricultural families, composed mainly of refugees. It discloses how hundreds of Jewish workers have risked their lives to constrict six miles of barbed wire entanglements along the northern frontier of Palestine in order to improve the country’s security and to prevent Arab terrorists from smuggling arms from Syria.
The report emphasizes that, although the Jews were depressed the recent British decree for a six-month suspension of Jewish immigration to Palestine and the Government’s to acquire and develop the primitive soil.
As an illustration of the effectiveness of the Jewish efforts in the face of terrorism, the report points out that production in the last year has increased more than 150 per cent over the previous year.
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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.
