U.J.A. Delegation Returns from Israel; Reports Sharply Increased Humanitarian Needs

In the first eyewitness account of conditions in Israel since the cease-fire, a United Jewish Appeal delegation of three top leaders told a nationwide audience on a telephone hookup today that the needs of UJA’s immigrant aid, relief and welfare programs in Israel have been sharply increased by war damage and by an economic dislocation which will continue for some time to come.

The cost of maintaining these humanitarian programs in the foreseeable future is presently unascertainable, the delegation reported to some 500 communities from coast to coast, but is certain to be in the hundreds of millions. The American Jewish community must provide the bulk of the funds needed, they declared, through a continued heavy response to the Israel Emergency Fund of the United Jewish Appeal.

The delegation, consisting of UJA associate general chairman Edward Ginsberg of Cleveland. Women’s Division chairman, Mrs. Harry L. Jones of Detroit and Young Leadership Cabinet chairman Leonard D. Bell of Lewiston, Me., returned late yesterday from four days of intensive study in Israel. In addition to key battle points of the recent war, they visited many towns, villages and settlements and saw evidence of severe damage and disruption directly affecting the lives of immigrants who had been brought to Israel by UJA for resettlement.

Pointing out that mobilization will have to continue through a long and uncertain period of peace negotiations, Mr. Ginsberg declared: “The price of peace may be more costly than the price of victory. The severe dislocation to Israel’s economy, the loss of tourism already incurred, the loss of industrial and agricultural productivity, the cost of rebuilding and repairing physical damage caused by war, of constructing new immigrant houses to replace those destroyed, of rebuilding agricultural settlements, and the loss of crops burned in the field…create an economic burden of impossible dimensions for Israel’s people. Therefore they turn to all Jewry, especially the American Jewish community, to take over completely those functions and program for which the UJA has always been responsible.”

GREATEST AREAS OF NEED IN POST-WAR ISRAEL DESCRIBED BY DELEGATION

The five greatest areas of need, he said were housing, absorption, aid to agricultural settlements, health services and education. In addition to rebuilding and repairing immigrant housing, new quarters will be needed for an increased number of immigrants expected to arrive from various countries. Combatting unemployment caused by economic dislocation will be a major absorption task. Losses sustained by the agricultural settlements — in buildings, livestock and equipment as well as lost crops — will have to be made up. Care of war victims, the newly orphaned and the aged who now have nobody to support them will swell the health service need. Intensification of aid to immigrant education, from pre-kindergarten through high school, has become more essential than ever.

Mrs. Jones, noting the courage of a civilian population under fire consisting mainly of women and children, reported that women’s volunteer services were crucial in maintaining order and morale. Graphically describing air raid shelters beneath houses on the Syrian border, furnished with cribs and playpens for children who endured six days of shelling, she told thousands of women listening around the country that “the part we have played through our plus gifts to the Israel Emergency Fund is small in comparison to the many sacrifices the women of Israel have made and will continue to make.”

The extent of the need in the absorption towns, on the farms and on the rehabilitation rolls has not yet been fully established, the leaders said. Mr. Bell, indicating that damage was often indiscernible at first, described as a symbol of deepened human need beneath the surface, the UJA settlement of Gadot in the Galilee, which seems untouched from the air but, when visited, shows a community in which nearly every building has been hit. The task of rebuilding disrupted humanitarian programs among an immigrant people hard hit by war and continued mobilization, is monumental, the three leaders emphasized.