Dr. Israel Goldstein, Zionist leader and president of the American Jewish Congress, last night called for the establishment by the United States of a Middle East Development Authority to plan and carry out a vast scheme of economic rehabilitation as part of a program of bringing peace to that strategic section of the world and stopping East-West rivalry. He spoke at the annual Jewish National Fund dinner, marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish National Fund Council of Cleveland.
Looking ahead, Dr. Goldstein predicted that the population of Israel will rise to four million by 1968 as contrasted with 65, 000 Jews that were in Palestine in 1948, when the State of Israel was proclaimed. To aid in the absorption of this huge immigration, Dr. Goldstein urged American Jews to make it possible for the Jewish National Fund to increase its activities of land reclamation and land development in Israel.
Pointing to the achievements of the Jewish National Fund in the course of the last ten years since the establishment of the State of Israel, Dr. Goldstein stated that the Jewish National Fund has increased its land holdings from a quarter of a million acres to one million acres; has established more than 500 rural settlements ; has settled more than half a million immigrants on the land and has planted some 30, 000 trees in all parts of the country. The latest exploit of the Jewish National Fund was the drainage of the Huleh swamp area in the North of Israel comprising 15, 000 acres and supporting more than 10, 000 settlers in an area which for thousands of years was known as the malarial post-hole of the Middle East.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
