On its 50th anniversary the Jewish National Fund has presented the State of Israel with 2,500,000 dunams (625,000 acres) of nationally owned land, Dr. Abraham Granott, world director of the J.N.F., declared last night at the opening of a national jubilee conference of the organization. He revealed that some 400,000 duname of the redeemed land was wrested from the desert. Last year alone, he emphasized, 40,000 dunams were reclaimed from the desert.
Dr. Granott insisted that the organization was so successful because its principle of maintaining its own independence was universally approved. He said that the J.N.F. was one cornerstone of the great Israeli project of “gathering in the exiles” because it prepared the immigrants to take up agricultural occupations. He said that the two major projects facing the organization this year was the drainage of the Huleh swamp and the planting of a gigantic forest in honor of the 6,000,000 Jews martyred by the Nazis.
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.
