“The greatest boon America could bestow upon the nations of the Middle East is the realization that they could learn with profit from Israel’s land reforms inaugurated by the Jewish National Fund some 50 years ago and carried forward into our own day, ” Dr. Abraham Granott, chairman an of the board of directors of the JNF, declared here today upon his arrival in the United States.
“Israel holds the key to the problems of the whole Middle East since they are mostly a result of the inequitable land tenure, which has allowed the accumulation of vast stretches of land in the hands of a few, leaving most of the peasantry without land ownership,” Dr. Granott stated. He came to New York to consult with Jewish leaders about new land projects in Israel, made necessary by the outbreak of Soviet anti-Semitism, he announced.
Dr. Granott said that the greatest problem now facing Israel is how to wrest more land from the desert and how quickly to turn the barren mountains into food producing areas. “The Jewish National Fund,” he stated, “is now engaged upon two gigantic soil reclamation projects, which when-completed, will add greatly to the agricultural area of the country. One of these projects is the drainage of the Huleh swamp region, the other is the afforestation and reclamation of the Negev.
Dr. Granott pointed out that the Jewish National Fund has been of great help in affording employment to tens of thousands of new settlers who arrived after the establishment of the State of Israel. “We are expanding our facilities in order to enable us to provide more employment in afforestation and reclamation works to those who will come to us from the Soviet controlled countries,” he said.
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.
