Special Knesset Session Praises Keren Hayesod for Devotion to Jews, Israel

The Keren Hayesod has raised $2 billion for the State of Israel and, previously, for the Jewish community in Palestine, Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir told a special session of the Knesset devoted to the 50th anniversary of the founding of Keren Hayesod at the London Zionist Conference of 1920. Calling it an “unprecedented event” that a “people dispersed all over the globe should tax itself voluntarily to see its dream come true.” the Minister said two-thirds of the money raised was raised in the U.S. and 90 percent of the money raised was raised after the establishment of the State of Israel. The people’s greatest response came during the Six-Day War when the Emergency Appeal was set up, he said, and within a few days $300 million was collected. “Long lines of contributors lined up at UJA offices and Israeli embassies in many countries parents donated their savings; communities and synagogues sold their property; housewives, children and pensioners gave us their savings and young boys and girls took on Jobs and donated their earnings to the emergency fund.” Mr. Sapir said there was not “a single development enterprise, not a single achievement in this country that has not benefited from the Keren Hayesod.”