Israel’s ubiquitous bureaucracy came under sharp attack today from Gen. Haim Herzog, former chief of military intelligence, who addressed the meeting of the Zionist General Council (Actions Committee) here. Charging that bureaucratic inefficiency was harming the absorption of immigrants, Herzog urged Zionists to “take off your silk gloves with respect to the Israel government when it comes to the bureaucracy that is oppressing immigrants.”
Herzog, a well-known military commentator, said a new immigrant from the Soviet Union cannot understand why he must wait 5-7 years for a telephone. He said “one example of the Israeli bureaucracy at work was the disabled Army veteran who had to get the permission of 13 government authorities before he could open a gas station,” Herzong said the problem was an internal one for Israel “but the Zionist movement must help solve it.”
Recent immigrants from Britain and Australia took a similar dim view of the bureaucracy but had praise for the Israeli offices of the British and Australian Zionist Federations which have helped them settle. Dr. Paul Vulfsons, an orthopedic surgeon from Adelaide, Australia, described the ZF office as “an island of sympathy in a sea of bureaucratic hostility and indifference.”
Some of the immigrants criticized the Jewish Agency’s emissaries in their home countries for giving them false information about Israel. Others said the Jewish Agency handled their immigration thoughtfully and efficiently.
During the course of debate at today’s General Council meeting, Mrs. Rose Matzkin, president of Hadassah, noted that her organization collected $9 million for Israel in addition to sums it collected for Jewish needs in the U.S. She stressed that Zionists as well as other Jewish groups were helping to finance programs in Israel.
Jacques Torczyner, an American leader of the World Union of General Zionists, claimed that Jewish intellectuals in the U.S. were mounting an attack against the Zionist movement and called for an information and propaganda program to counter it. He warned that there was some danger that the U.S. might reduce its interest in the Middle East and Europe now that a cease-fire has been signed in Vietnam.
Ellezer Robinson, chairman of the Argentine Zionist Organization, said that Jewish education in Latin America was “marking time.” He said it was up to the World Zionist Movement to help the half million Argentine Jews, especially the youth, focus a larger measure of their attention on Israel.
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