The United Jewish Appeal will start an immediate emergency cash campaign to raise by mid-October $10,000,000 to finance the immigration of North African Jews to Israel, Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, executive vice-chairman of the National UJA, revealed here last night prior to departing for Paris and New York.
The UJA executive head, who deplored exaggerations of the plight of the North African Jews, said that the Jews had not been primary targets in the pogroms in several Moroccan cities in the past few weeks, but that the mobs had turned on the Jews in frustration. He said that the UJA plans to make North African immigration the top priority of its 1956 drive.
The Jewish Agency, Rabbi Friedman reported, plans to bring 45,000 North African Jews to Israel in the next twelve months but this figure is subject to change depending on conditions in that area, he said. If relative calm is restored, the number may be reduced to 20,000; but if the violence grows migration will be increased to as much as 100,000. The cost of transportation and initial absorption of each North African immigrant is $1,000, Rabbi Friedman 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.
