The United Jewish Appeal has raised $39,000,000 in cash during the first five months of this year, it was announced here today by Edward M.M. Warburg, general chairman of the U.J.A. at the closing session of the two-day National Mobilization Conference of the agency.
The conference, attended by 500 Jewish community leaders from all parts of the country, was also told by Mr. Warburg that in response to the U.J.A. urgent call to the communities to raise a minimum of $10,000,000 in cash during the month of May, the communities raised the record sum of $12,000,000.
Mr. Warburg described the $39,000,000 in cash raised thus far in the 1952 drive as “a magnificent outpouring of generosity” by American Jews. “They are showing that they cannot stand by idly while Israel struggles in economic hardship and while hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Eastern Europe and Moslem countries live in fear of their lives,” he stated. The conference delegates unanimously adopted a resolution pledging “tireless and vigorous efforts to maintain and increase the flow of cash to the United Jewish Appeal.”
SHARETT AND EBAN APPEAL TO U.S. JEWS FOR MORE AID TO ISRAEL
Addressing the final session of the conference, Israel Ambassador Abba Eban reiterated a plea made last night at the parley by Israel’s Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett in which he called upon American Jewry to give the maximum financial assistance to Israel in order to help the state win economic security.
Mr. Eban emphasized Israel’s unique position as a democracy in the Middle East, asserting that the fact of its existence as a democratic state must “not be viewed in American or in Western terms, but in terms of the area in which the institution of democracy has been planted–an area surrounded by nothing but despotism by absolute monarchism, by feudal and corrupt republics.”
The Ambassador reminded the U.J.A. conferees of Israel’s bitter struggle to achieve a modern economy while absorbing 700,000 new immigrants who have doubled the state’s initial population. “The astonishing thing,” he said, “is not that we have accomplished this unique process of absorption to the accompaniment of much hardship and tension-the miracle is that this feat has been accomplished at all.”
Foreign Minister Sharett described the serious shortage of funds which forced Israel to adopt a “makeshift method” of economic existence. He said the lack of funds is retarding full development of Israel’s agricultural potential and “epoch-making discoveries of mineral wealth.”
Mr. Sharett forecast a “rich industrial and commerical future for the whole of Israel “provided the U.J.A. and other sources succeed in raising many more millions of dollars in a “selfless, farsighted and creative assistance” for the new state. At the same time, he expressed the belief that Israel’s mineral discoveries “will in all probability,” sooner or later, include the discovery of oil.
Israel’s economic future “is only a question of funds,” Mr. Sharett said, adding that in other respects the new state is richly endowed with people, knowledge, determination and physical assets. He cited as an example of makeshift efforts forced on Israel the procedure by which the new state achieved its recent bumper grain crop in the almost unsettled Negev.
Reporting that the Israel Government found it necessary to temporarily enlist hundreds of veteran farmers, bringing them to the Negev to sow and reap 175,000 acres of barley and wheat, he pointed out that had adequate funds been available for Negev colonization by new immigrants, this vast agricultural operation would have been unnecessary. “Only a greatly increased local population will permanently fill the Negev vacuum and help Israel to live and prosper,” he stated.
U.J.A. AGENCIES SPENT $45,244,000 SINCE JANUARY; $37,000,000 IN ISRAEL
Mr. Warburg, in an interim report on U.J.A. expenditures, notably in Israel, said that the agencies of the U.J.A.–the United Israel Appeal, Joint Distribution Committee and United Service for New Americans–spent a total of $45,244,000 since January 1st to save, resettle and rehabilitate 537,000 men, women and children. Of this sum, nearly $37,000,000 was spent in Israel alone to provide for the settlement, housing and welfare of the 310,000 immigrants.
Mr. Warburg said the $37,000,000 spent in Israel in the first five months of 1952 brings to nearly $300,000,000 the total of U.J.A. funds made available to Israel since its establishment four years ago. Other speakers included Rudolf Sonneborn, national chairman of the United Israel Appeal, and Moses Leavitt, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee.
Chief among the outstanding checks presented at the conference today were by the following Jewish communities: New York, $2,200,000; Chicago, $1,405,000; Los Angeles, $1,000,000; Detroit, $1,000,000; Philadelphia, $500,000; Washington, D.C., $500,000; and, San Francisco, $350,000.
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.
