More Jews settled in Palestine after the Arab disturbances last August than during the preceding eight months of last year, according to a report received yesterday by the Allied Jewish Campaign from the Palestine Jewish Labor Federation, which states that the net Jewish immigration for 1929 was 3,493. During January of the present year, 512 more Jews entered the country.
According to the Labor Federation’s report, 1,317 non-Jews entered Palestine last year, and 1,089 left, making a net non-Jewish immigration of 229, compared to a net non-Jewish emigration of 76 in 1928 and 1,086 in 1927.
“The contention that Jewish immigration may be taken as an index of general prosperity is fully borne out by these figures,” says the report. “Not that immigrant Jews are ousting the old inhabitants, but, on the contrary, the greater the advent of Jews, the less the emigration among the indigenous population, and vice versa.”
According to the latest report of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, there is apparent a strong revival among the Jewish youth of Europe of a desire to become pioneers in Palestine. This tendency seems, according to the Agency report, to have been stimulated by the August disturbances. Secretary Barlass of the Immigration Department of the Jewish Agency has reported that the “Hehalutz” organization in Poland, composed of Jewish youths training for pioneer life in Palestine had, at the end of this year, 295 branches as against 170 before the riots. Thirteen hundred youths are in training in Poland, 450 in Galicia, 380 in Roumania, 250 in Germany, 200 in Czechoslovakia, as well as groups in other countries, bringing the total up to 2,955, of which approximately 35% are girls.
The labor situation is described as satisfactory, in the Agency report. There were only 595 Jews unemployed in Palestine at the beginning of February, the majority of whom had been engaged in building operations or in public works suspended during the rainy season. Extensive building operations, says the report, will begin as soon as the wet season ends, and employment in the plantation colonies is awaiting some 1,500 immigrants within the next few months.
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.
