Political report of the Executive of the Jewish Agency submitted to the ... Zionist Congress and the ... session of the Council of the Jewish Agency · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 81

81 advance may be expected in the current year; the Government having agreed to re-consider the possibility of basing the grant on its estimated expenditure on Arab education in the financial year in question and not, as heretofore, on its actual expenditure on that service in the previous year. The increased grant-in-aid, however, would still be based on the numerical proportion of the Jewish child population to the total., without talcing into account the special financial sacrifices made by the Jewish community for the maintenance of its school system over and above its contribution to Revenue. The Jewish Agency would submit that the Hebrew school system is reasonably entitled to ask from the Government a supplementary per capita grant, towards that extra expenditure. As regards the grants to the Jewish medical services there appears to be little change in the unsatisfactory position recorded in the preceding years. The Government continues to base its medical services on the primitive standards of the Arab community. Some of the services provided by Jewish medical institutions receive no grants at all because the Government does not find it possible or necessary to provide similar services to the Arab population. Such grants as are received from the Government form an insignificant proportion of the total cost of the services to the Jewish community. So far the Government has failed to take into account the higher and different needs of the Jewish population or the fact that it is Jewish immigration which has supplied, in large part, the means for the provision of public services to the country as a whole. The Jewish Agency would urge a fundamental revision by the Government of the system in accordance with which it at present provides for medical services, with a view to widening their scope for the benefit of both Jews and Arabs, and relieving the Jewish population of the double burden of taxation which it is now carrying by paying taxes to the Government and by shouldering, in addition, a heavy burden of expenditure for its own medical needs. 12. I would like once more to call attention to the highly unsatisfactory state of affairs prevailing in regard to the employment of Jews in public works and services. The share allotted to Jewish labour on public works during the period under review has been insignificant. On the Palestine Railways the proportion of the Jewish Railway personnel is about S%; in the ports of Palestine, as far as the governmental services are concerned, the share of Jewish labour is nil. I would submit that not only is this position seriously unjust to the Jewish population but that it is also detrimental to the interests of good government, from which point of view it would seem to be essential in a country like Palestine that the members of one race should not predominate in so exaggerated a degree at the expense of the other among the personnel of the essential services. I would urge that the Government should adopt the