Recession in U.s.would Seriously Affect Israel, Harriman Warns

A prolonged recession in the United States would make Israel’s difficult economic problems “utterly unmanageable,” W.Averell Harriman, Director for Mutual Security, declared tonight in an address to more than 400 Jewish leaders attending a testimonial dinner given by the Palestine Economic Corporation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Mr. Harriman said that a “recession here would cut our imports and have a shattering affect abroad. Moreover, it would spread to other countries, shrink their purchasing power and reduce their ability to buy the goods which Israel has to sell.” The Mutual Security Director added that a recession in the United States “would also tend to dry up private sources of assistance and capital investment so vital to Israel during the next years.”

The United States, Mr. Harriman asserted, “must maintain a dynamic expanding economy, not only for our own sake, or for Israel, but for the sake of the whole free world.” Mr. Harriman also expressed confidence that “the strains and frictions which now exist between Israel and its neighbors will be ameliorated and ultimately removed by the economic upbuilding and social improvement of the whole Middle East.”

PALESTINE ECONOMIC CORPORATION HONORS BUILDERS OF ISRAEL

Alan M. Stroock who served as chairman of the dinner, announced that guests had subscribed to more than $500,000 worth of P.E.C. stock in honor of “Six Builders of Israel.” The P.E.C. testimonial dinner honored the following as “Builders of Israel:”

Mrs. Felix M. Warburg, widow of the late co-founder of the P.E.C., whose $500,000 gift to Israel led to the formation of the Warburg Foundation for Settling Immigrants in Israel, in which the Israel Government and the P.E.C. are participants: William O’Neil, president of the General Tire and Rubber Co., of Akron, O., which sponsors of the General Tire and Rubber Co. of Israel, now in full production.

Also Joseph Mazer, treasurer of the Hudson Pulp and Paper Co., and motivating force, with the P.E.C., behind the American-Israeli Paper Mills, Israel’s first paper plant; Joseph Levy, president of Crawford Clothes, and together with the P.E.C. the builder of Israel’s two largest and most modern office structures, located in Tel Aviv; Leonard Ratner, Cleveland industrialist and philanthropist who has joined the P.E.C. in the construction of a large lumber mill in the Haifa Bay area; and David Bernstein, representing the American Biltrite Rubber Co., of Chelsea, Mass., which has invested with the P.E.C. in building in Israel a synthetic shoe side and heel plant.