A total of $35,000,000 has been received by the United Jewish Appeal thus far this year, including $137,000 in gifts presented this week-end by American Christian leaders, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., general chairman of the U.J.A., announced today at the concluding session here of the national conference called by the U.J.A. National Christian Committee. Mr. Morgenthau also stated that $112,000,000 had been raised by the 1949 U.J.A. campaign.
The two-day conference here was the first ever called by a Christian committee of the organization. Among the gifts announced today were: Ford Motor Company, $50,000; Dr. G.A. Wrightson of New York, $25,000; John Hay Whitney, $10,000; Col. Augustus Busch of St. Louis, $20,000; Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, $3,500; Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, $1,000; Des Moines Register-Tribune, $10,000; Shell Oil Company, $5,000; and, Union Electric Company of St. Louis, $5,000.
Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt, chairman of the Christian Committee, asserting that the sale of arms by Britain to the Arabs represents a serious threat to democracy throughout the world, urged that the U.S. must “discourage any trigger-happy Arab state from starting another war in the Middle-East.” He said that “there must be no re-armament before a stable and lasting peace has been established.”
“Through our economic and financial assistance and through the campaign of the U.J.A. we must demonstrate to the Arab world that the American people are determined to continue their full-scale support to Israel.” He added that “what we are concerned with in the organization and work of the Christian Committee is to make known our sense of kinship in the struggle to lift an oppressed people out of the toils of despair and to share to the best of our ability in the work of immigration and settlement in Israel and aid to the distressed Jews in other parts of the world.”
ISRAEL NEEDS $300,000,000 IN FOREIGN CURRENCY IN 1950, ISRAEL MINISTER SAYS
Dr. Dov Joseph, Minister of Supply and Rationing of Israel, who came to the U.S. to attend this parley, reported that the people of Israel are still in the throes of a struggle for the establishment of the Jewish state. “We have now entered upon the third phase of the struggle–the battle to cure our oconomic ills and to lay a sound foundation for the economic life and development of the country.” Dr. Joseph reported that apart from security needs, Israel must have $300,000,000 in imports or foreign currency this year for the purchase of food, raw materials, machinery, chemicals, fuel, transport vehicles and other equipment.
Expressing the hope that the “unwarranted enmity” of the Arab states will be replaced by a spirit of friendship and cooperation,” Dr. Joseph said: “In the meanwhile, we dare not belittle the danger of the present Arab attitude to us. The Arabs still believe they will be able to solve the ‘Jewish problem’ in Israel by destroying us.” In Jerusalem, the Israeli Minister said that while Israel is ready to agree to an effective measure of U.N. supervision with regard to the safety and accessibility of the Holy Places, Israel “cannot agree to the detachment from the state of Israel of the city of Jerusalem with its more than 100,000 Jewish inhabitants and its deeplyrooted Jewish life.”
Asserting that the survival and development of Israel as a democratic nation is a matter of deep concern to all Americans, Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman today called for support of immigration and settlement programs in Israel. He stated that Israel is a democracy that has sprung up in an area of the world, “where its fruits are badly needed.” Secretary Chapman added that despite the fact that a record immigration has created great difficulties “Israel will win its heroic struggle to establish a sound economy just as it won the war for its freedom.”
Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan suggested that the U.S. Point Four program be used to help develop agriculture in Israel. Praising agricultural progress in Israel, he said that in Israel “the work in research, pest control, irrigation projects and other phases of agriculture is of a very high order.”
MORGENTHAU HAILS CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTIONS; URGES INTENSIFIED EFFORTS
Mr. Morgenthau hailed the Christian contribution today as a “heart warming manifestation of the spirit of brotherhood and of the friendship of the American people for the new democracy of Israel.” He emphasized that despite the progress made thus far, emergency situations still exist in Israel and Jewish communities in other countries.
“I am not going to discuss the military and political situation,” Mr. Morgenthau said. “But we must not underestimate the developments in Cairo and the machinations of the Arab League. There are various ways of making war. The Arab states are intensifying their economic war against Israel. They are counting on to get tired. They are hoping the United Jewish Appeal will fail,” he said.
Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, discussing the situation of Jews in countries in Europe, North Africa and the Near East, said there are at least 170,000 Jews “whose emigration to Israel and other havens in 1950 appears as a matter of absolute necessity–of now or never.”
Walter H. Bieringer, president of the United Service for New Americans, said that as a result of the projected liberalization of the displaced persens law, between 40,000 and 45,000 immigrant Jews will enter the United States this year instead of the 25,000 expected previously.
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.
