Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1935-08-01 · 8.1935 · p. Seite 123

During these fifteen years Keren Hayesod funds have been applied to manifold uses. The Keren Hayesod has promoted and influenced the upbuilding process in every single sphere. It has now arrived at a point where it can share the responsibility for some of the important services with Palestine Jewry, subsidising but no longer financing the whole service. The imminent consolidation of existing Keren Hayesod settlements will bring them to a point at which they will be able, presently, to start paying the interest and sinking-fund charges agreed upon. The new epoch on which we are now embarking will have to concentrate on two essential tasks, firstly, to bring about a marked increase in income, secondly—and that has always been the principal plank in the Zionist platform and the main object of the Keren Hayesod—to promote agricultural colonisation. The enormously increased immigration and the rapid development of urban settlement, of trade and industry, has emphasised the rôle of the national Funds in the promotion of rural settlement. The slow and difficult development of agriculture and the inadequate agricultural training O'f the average immigrant demand very energetic and prompt measures on the part of the national Funds in order to effect an improvement in the present anomalous situation. The Keren Hayesod has set itself the task of adjusting its apparatus and propaganda to this purpose. From its very inception it provided a common platform for Zionists and non-Zionists, and the participation of both elements in the Jewish Agency was to be the starting-point for increased support on the part of the non- Zionists. This anticipation has been only partially realised, so that the Keren Hayesod has been unable to mobilise the pro-Palestinian elements of world Jewry as fully as it had hoped. It is the opinion of the Board of Directors that Keren Hayesod contributors the world over offer the best basis for an extension of the Jewish Agency. Their number cannot be quite reliably ascertained because in the most important country of all, the United States of America, the Keren Hayesod does not conduct a separate campaign, but forms part of an all-Jewish fund-raising body. In the other countries, in which Keren Hayesod collections are legally permitted, the number of contributors, which had diminished as a result of the crisis, has been brought up to its former level. It should not prove too hard to improve upon these figures. The very fact that the number of contributors has risen in certain countries despite the continuation and even aggravation of the crisis, proves the existence of reserves in middle-class and labour circles, reserves which have not yet been adequately tapped. In point of fact, the economic distress in general and that of the Jewish people in particular, compels a broadening of the whole basis. The lowering of the individual contribution must be set off by a corresponding increase in the number of contributors. In order to bring this about we shall have (1) to deepen Zionist consciousness and adjust Zionist problems and ideology to the changed situation of the world at large and to that of world Jewry, (2) to develop the 123