Israel’s agricultural development–with the aid of American Jews–has made “important advances during the past year with 43 new settlements set up and the cultivated area expanded to cover 4,000,000 dunams (1,000,000 acres),” Rudolf G. Sonneborn, national chairman of the United Israel Appeal, reported last night at an executive committee meeting at the Hotel Commodore.
With the largest single portion of the funds provided by Jews in this country, United Israel Appeal spent for agricultural development in 1953 the sum of $43,535,000, which comprised more than half the total UIA expenditures last year, amounting to $85,085,000, Mr. Sonneborn reported. He said that the irrigated area had been increased by almost 30 percent in the course of the year.
Ellis Radinsky, UIA executive director, focussed on the fact that “inadequate philanthropic funds are creating difficult conditions for an increasingly large number of immigrant families. Even minimal relief allotments, averaging a monthly payment of six Israeli pounds per person, have to be delayed at times, thus creating considerable hardships among the immigrants in transition centers,” Mr. Radinsky said.
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