In a completely spontaneous and entirely unexpected demonstration, thousands of Israelis in all walks of life sent or brought contributions to the Ministry of Defense here today to a fund to buy arms for Israel. The popular reaction to Premier Moshe Sharett’s appeal to the Jews of the world to aid in arming Israel caught the Government entirely unawares and hasty arrangements were made under which the Post Office delivered the outpourings direct to the bank where a special account was set up.
Defense Ministry and postal authorities, deluged under a flood of offerings, estimated that thousands of contributions had already been sent in and that the amount received was several hundred thousand pounds. The snowballing campaign got under way first in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach Tikvah where factory workers pledged a day’s pay to the arms fund. Many of the contributions were addressed personally to Premier-designate and Defense Minister David Ben Gurion.
So strongly has the campaign caught the popular imagination that proposals made during the Knesset debate for a public arms loan are being dropped and the Cabinet, meeting on Sunday, will decide on what lead it should give to the enthusiastic public.
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