Pincus Says Free World’s Jews Must Assume Burden of Refugee Aid

Aryeh L. Pincus, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, told 550 members of the United Jewish Appeal study mission last night that “the Six-Day War did not solve any of the urgent problems facing more than 350,000 of Israel’s recent immigrants from the African and Asian countries” and that Israel’s security and postwar needs made it imperative that the Jews of the world, particularly American Jews, “bear the entire humanitarian program of immigrant aid and absorption.”

The Jewish Agency leader spoke at a banquet to the visiting Americans who will make a 13-day survey of Israel’s needs which American Jewry helps meet through the annual campaigns of the United Jewish Appeal. Edward Ginsberg, of Cleveland, associate general chairman of UJA, and Rabbi Herbert Friedman, executive vice-chairman, also addressed the mission. The main body of the mission arrived from New York yesterday in three chartered planes and joined the 150 members who had arrived here earlier.

Mr. Pincus warned the mission that “Arab intransigence” had aggravated the situation, pointing out that “as long as the Arabs refuse to talk peace, Israel must continue to remain partially mobilized.” He stressed the need for Israel to replace equipment lost in the war and to meet the “heavy cost of continuing normal service in the territories which Israel now administers.”

He reminded the mission that before the war, the Israelis contributed $2 out of every $3 spent for social welfare and assistance to immigrants. Now, he said, the Jews of the free world had to be asked to bear “the humanitarian burdens connected with immigration.”

Mr. Pincus said that the first priorities of this absorption campaign were the construction of adequate housing facilities, an educational campaign which would eradicate widespread illiteracy among the immigrants, training programs to upgrade unskilled and therefore under-employed workers and the elimination of all other social ills which still exist among large sections of those immigrants the United Jewish Appeal helped bring to freedom.