Two hundred members of the United Jewish Appeal Study Mission visited Kiryat Shemona yesterday to see at first hand how the government and the Jewish Agency have been at work to bolster the security, economic and social life of the immigrant township of 20.000 whose proximity to the Lebanese border has made it a prime target of terrorist outrages.
Kiryat Shemona was the scene of a terrorist massacre last April which took the lives of 18 and wounded 15. mostly women. and children. Yesterday the group of American Jewish leaders, headed by UJA general chairman Paul Zuckerman inspected the new schools established through the UJA’s Israel Education Fund and the new housing units constructed by the government for immigrant families and young couples. They met with Joseph Shitrit who lost his wife and three of his four children in the terrorist attack. “No force will remove us from this place,” he told them.
An army officer who briefed the mission members noted that not a single town, school or factory on the northern frontier has been abandoned despite the terrorist attempts to disrupt civilian life. The Mayor of Kiryat Shemona told the visitors that the only way to make the town secure was to increase its population from 20.000 to 100,000.
Later the UJA group was greeted at Ayelet Hashachar by Moshe Rivlin, secretary general of the Jewish Agency, who spoke of the 37 agricultural settlements and several development townships built by the Agency to secure Israel’s central regions. These settlements were shelled before, during and after the Yom Kippur War, he said. In order to survive, they must increase their populations and create new industries, Rivlin said.
He stressed that a strong Israel meant not only an army but a viable economy and more immigration. He urged the UJA to be prepared for a huge influx of Jews from the Soviet Union which may start within 2-3 months. “God forbid we should not be ready to absorb them. It is something we cannot delay until tomorrow,” Rivlin 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.
