The National Assembly of American Zionists, meeting here today, proposed a five-point program aimed at increasing the flow of American immigrants to Israel, In a special report on immigration activities, Louis Segal, chairman of the Aliyah Committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel, recommended that the American Zionist movement, through its coordinating arm, the American Zionist Council:
1. Establish a fund to enable potential immigrants from the United States to obtain mortgages under favorable conditions for purchase of homes and other property in Israel.
2. Create an “American township” in Israel under model conditions.
3. Make each local Zionist Council in the United States a liaison office for the channeling of information concerning opportunities for Americans emigrating to Israel.
4. Organize “pre-Aliyah” tours of Americans seriously intending to settle in Israel.
5. Encourage American Jewish youth to participate in “Ulpanim” and workshops in Israel. The Ulpan Plan conducts intensified language schools in which Hebrew is learned rapidly. These should include scholarships and other grants.
Mr. Segal noted that more than 10,000 Americans had emigrated to Israel since the Jewish State was established in 1948. The figures, he declared, “will show that, during the calendar year 1960, an additional 1,000 Americans will have settled in Israel permanently.”
Mr. Segal admitted that the major stumbling block to any mass emigration of American Jews to Israel has been and will continue to be the fact that American Jews are reluctant to abandon a democratic country with an unmatched standard of living. The only possible way to solve this problem, said Mr. Segal, is to deal with American Jews us individuals, rather than in the mass, thus making it as convenient as possible for them to settle in Israel.
SHARETT CALLS WORLD ZIONIST MOVEMENT VITAL TO ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE
Addressing the Assembly last night, former Israel Prime Minister Moshe Sharett termed “irresponsible” any assumption that Israel is in a present position to dispense with the assets of the Zionist movement outside its borders. Speaking before 1,000 delegates at the Stather-Hilton Hotel, he declared that the “function of the World Zionist Organization is no vital, it would have to be created if it did not exist today.”
Mr. Sharett criticized the theory that the World Zionist Organization should be scrapped in favor of a system of separate and individual relationships between Israel and a variety of splinter Jewish groups in each of the nations of the world. “Israel,” he said, “must be wary of any attempt to pursue this ruinous course. Not only would it constitute outright intervention on Israel’s part in the affairs of foreign nationals, it would play havoc with the financing of Israel’s vast and vital development projects.
“As long as Israel is engaged in basic development work,” Mr. Sharett declared, “as long as Jews are driven by material and spiritual enslavement to emigrate to Israel, so long will the Jewish communities of the free world be called upon to finance this development and this emigration with gift monies.”
Only the central force of the world Zionist movement, Mr. Sharett asserted, was capable of galvanizing world Jewry to meet these tasks. Admitting that the World Zionist Organization represented only a fraction of the mass of world Jewry, Mr. Sharett nevertheless contended that its true value would continue to lie in the fact that “it is the only centralized expression of Jewish allegiance to Israel.” He cited as a paradox of our times that even those Jewish organizations self-labeled as non
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.
