Number of Jews in Palestine Trebled; $20,000,000 Expended in 10 Years, Says Rothenberg

Tripling of the Jewish population of Palestine over a period of ten years, and the expenditure of approximately $20,000,000 in economic, sanitary and cultural activities tending to facilitate the establishment in the Holy Land of a Jewish Homeland under the aegis of Great Britain were reported yesterday at a meeting, in the Hotel Biltmore, of the advisory committee of the New York Allied Jewish Campaign, by Morris Rothenberg, one of the national chairmen of that effort to raise $6,000,000 for the purposes of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Joint Distribution Committee. New York City will have a “drive” beginning on the 27th of this month to secure $2,500,000 toward the $6,000,000 quota of which the Joint Distribution Committee will receive $3,500,000 and the Jewish Agency $2,500,000. Heretofore funds for Palestine were raised in this country through the United Palestine Appeal which is now replaced by the Allied Jewish Campaign.

In 1919, Mr. Rothenberg said, when Palestine had just emerged from Turkish rule and been mandated to Great Britain by the League of Nations, the Jewish population was 57,000. At the end of last year it had grown to 162,000 or 18% of the total population. The stream of Jewish immigration, Mr. Rothenberg said, reached its highest peak in 1928, when 33,801 Jews entered the country. The smallest number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was in 1927, when only 2,713 entered the country, due, Mr. Rothenberg said, to an economic depression. “This has been overcome to such an extent that Palestine is now suffering from a labor shortage, especially in its citrus-belt, and the Zionist organization has applied to the British government for additional immigration certificates for the current year,” he stated.