Yaacov Tsur, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, said here last night that the time has come for the 72-year-old JNF to change its image abroad and engage in new projects in Israel in keeping with the nation’s ecological needs.
Tsur, who spoke at the opening session of the JNF Advisory Council meeting, noted that the world has changed and the Jewish people has changed since the JNF was established at the fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901.
Tsur urged the JNF to start thinking of work in Israeli towns and villages rather than just in the hills and open country. He said the JNF has already become a vital factor in Israel’s ecological battles and must increase its activities in that direction.
If Israel was a desert when the JNF began its activities at the turn of the century, it is now in danger of becoming a desert of stone and concrete, he said. The JNF must plant parks and malls to avoid this happening, Tsur said.
Mayor Teddy Kollek, of Jerusalem who attended the opening session of the meeting, said he had failed so far to persuade the JNF to plant trees and parks in his city and had to turn to private donors.
Advisory Council chairman Herman Weisman of New York, agreed with Tsur’s call for a new image and new projects and promised, that large scale fund-raising abroad would not interfere with the campaigns of the United Jewish Appeal and Keren Hayesod.
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