Special Interview Rivlin Says Jewish Agency General Assembly Will Focus on Aliya Issue

The sharp drop in immigration from both East and West will be the focus of greatest concern at the Jewish Agency’s annual General Assembly which opens here next Sunday. Moshe Rivlin, director general of the Jewish Agency, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a special interview that “We must use this period to re-examine all our methods and procedures in the area of aliya and absorption.”

Rivlin said that two independent and highly qualified committees were presently making a thorough review of the problem and their interim findings would be made available to the 300 delegates from all parts of the world who will be attending the General Assembly. One is the Horev committee, appointed jointly by the government and the Jewish Agency under the chairmanship of Haifa University President Amos Horev. It is made up of recent olim form various countries and representatives of various public bodies in Israel except the government and the Agency.

The second committee was established by the Jewish Agency alone under Harvard University Prof. Richard Rosenblum. Its task, Rivlin said, was to review the work of all Jewish Agency departments for efficiency and effectiveness. The Rosenblum committee has already submitted a generally favorable report on the operations of the Jewish Agency treasury and is now devoting itself to a study of the immigration-absorption mechanism, Rivlin said. All of its members are outside experts and none are Agency officials, he stressed.

“I know both these committees are working in depth,” Rivlin said, but he declined to predict their ultimate recommendations. The feeling in many quarters here, however, is that these may call for wholesale changes in the entire aliya procedure.

Rivlin observed that the rise and fall of aliya is not altogether in Israel’s hands as much depends on the policies of the Soviet authorities and on the conditions for Jews in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. “But we must see to it that our part of the process is operating efficiently and that the decisions of earlier assemblies are indeed being implemented,” Rivlin said.

RECONSTITUTED AGENCY A SUCCESS

The General Assembly opening next Sunday will be the fifth since the Jewish Agency was reconstituted in 1970 under the chairmanship of the late Louis Pincus to bring the heads of fund raising organizations abroad into the same forum with the World Zionist Organization leadership.

The experience of the last six years has proven “that the experiment succeeded and proved the vital need for the existence of the Jewish Agency in its broadened framework,” Rivlin said. He noted that “The constitution has certainly catalyzed world Jewish support for and identity with Israel and at the same time it gives diaspora Jewry a real part of the responsibility, it draws them into a real partnership with Israel,” the Jewish Agency official said.

Rivlin said the General Assembly will be presented with long-term plans drafted by the Agency’s settlement department, youth aliya department and Amigur, the Agency’s housing company. It will be asked to approve 3-5 year projects, details of which have not been released. Rivlin said that judging by past experience, the General Assembly is no rubber stamp. He said that searching discussions can be expected and recalled that there were occasions in the past when the Assembly has ordered certain projects suspended pending further study by the Agency’s Board of Governors.

COMPOSITION OF DELEGATIONS

Rivlin said that this year’s Assembly will be attended by a larger proportion of younger diaspora leaders, especially in the delegations of the fund-raising bodies. There will also be more delegates from the smaller cities and provincial communities and proportionately fewer from the major metropolitan centers, he said. The WZO contingent will be expanded by the participation of delegates from the world Reform movement, the World Maccabi and the World Sephardi Federation, bodies that recently affiliated with the WZO.

Rivlin predicted that the Assembly’s decisions would be influenced by the prevailing economic situation in Israel which has forced the government to make major cuts in health, education and welfare budgets. (By David Landau)