Jewish Agency Treasurer Charges ‘affluent’ Americans Let Israel Down

Louis Pincus, treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Israel, scored the failure of the American Jewish community to increase its support of Israel’s efforts to integrate new immigrants, at a time when Americans are enjoying a period of rising affluence.

Addressing the closing session last night of the 50th national convention of Hadassah, Mr. Pincus told the 2,000 delegates that, although the financial support of Israel’s immigration efforts should have “at least paralleled” the economic growth, “the facts are that it has, at best, maintained a plateau–this at a time of many years of continuous, large immigration into Israel, where the needs of the integration of new immigrants cannot adequately be met because of lack of funds. “

The failure of American Jewish fund-raising to keep pace with U. S. economic growth, Mr. Pincus said, may well represent the “failure to have brought home the message to the younger generation of Jews in this country; it also strikes at the roots of the future development of Jewish communal life. “

Warning the delegates of mounting threats to Jewish survival, Mr. Pincus said that “Jews tend to equate their freedom with the obligation to forget their Jewishness and to maintain their identity as belonging to a Jewish community.”

Mr. Pincus said that the coming decade will prove decisive whether or not this threat to Jewish survival will be overcome. This, he declared, “will basically be determined by the abilities of the Jewries of the United States on the one hand, and Israel on the other, to establish a basic understanding, a common language of ideas, means and objectives encompassing the totality of Jewish life. “

KENEN URGES ARAB-ISRAEL PEACE TALKS, APPEALS TO BIG POWERS

At an earlier session, I.L. Kenen, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, urged a more effective program to counter Arab propaganda, and to carry the truth about the Arab war against Israel to the American people.

He called upon the great powers to challenge the drift toward war, and bring the peoples of the Middle East to the peace table. Arab propaganda and threats in the United States, he said, have tried to block the steady normalization and consolidation of U. S. Israel relations.

“Pro-Arab agencies, ” he said, “are spending close to $2,000,000 a year in this country, and much of this is used to discredit Israel and to defame the Zionist movement in an effort to undermine Israel in this country and to weaken the U. S. commitment to preserve peace in the Near East.”

He noted that the relations between the United States and Israel have “reached a new level of understanding” during the past two years, as the United States has taken effective measures to deter aggression and to maintain the arms balance in the Middle East.