Israeli reading habits are creating serious difficulties for book publishers, according to Eliezer Pari, Israel book publishers association chairman, He said that only 25 percent of the population knows Hebrew sufficiently well to read a Hebrew book and that local publishers were suffering from competition of foreign language paperbacks which are widely sold in Israel at a quarter of the price of Hebrew books. Pari urged passage of a bill pending in the Knesset which would require municipalities to maintain free public libraries.
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