Fifty-two nations, including Israel, have this week-end launched World Refugee Year, a UN-sponsored project which does not get underway officially until Wednesday. WRY is planned to help at least 2,000,000 of the 15,000,000 refugees throughout the world still needing resettlement or aid.
Statements by many world leaders this week-end inaugurated the world-wide effort on behalf of the refugees. Sermons on the subject were preached yesterday by rabbis in many Jewish houses of worship throughout the United States.
President Ben Zvi, in his statement, declared that “the State of Israel is in a very special manner concerned in the refugee problem.” He pointed out that “a very substantial sector” of Israel’s population “has a refugee past.” He also noted that Israel is “particularly concerned with the yet unsettled problem of the Arab refugees.” The duty to care for refugees, he declared, “rests on all states and nations, large and small, but particularly on those countries which possess rich natural resources and large areas.”
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