THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002
Israel redoubles efforts to attract Jews from France, South Africa, Argentina
AFP THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002 3:25:37 AM
JERUSALEM: In a push to attract Jews from France, South Africa and crisis-hit Argentina, Israel has injected a monetary boost into immigration efforts as its own economy drags, Jewish Agency chairman Sallai Meridor said Wednesday.
"We've enhanced our efforts in absorption. The government and the Jewish Agency have agreed to provide special assistance to Jews coming from those communities," Meridor told reporters.
In the past year, 1,300 Jews have immigrated from Argentina, which has declared the biggest default in history on its 132-billion-dollar foreign debt, he said.
The agency's overall aid to Jews in the country has "increased by more than 100 percent," and immigration funds were boosted by 55 percent, Meridor added.
Israel is struggling with recession after 15 months of violence with the Palestinians and the government is torn over internal budget disputes.
However, the Jewish Agency, funded both by the government and privately, found 20 million dollars to allocate to Argentinian Jewry, 12.5 million of which were earmarked to promote immigration.
Meridor, who recently returned from a mission to Argentina, said that more than 20,000 Jews are on welfare lines, "many of whom once owned small businesses only years ago," he said.
"We are expecting a very sharp increase in immigration from Argentina, because the economic situation of the Jewish community there has worsened severely," agency spokesman Yehuda Weinraub told AFP recently.
Nearly half Argentina's 200,000 Jews, "notably traders, intellectuals and civil servants, have become the 'new poor', affected by unemployment," Weinraub said.
Meanwhile, Meridor said: "The situation in South Africa is not easy either. The economic crisis there is serious. The security situation is catastrophic, and there is a large degree of anti-Israel sentiment with a rise in Islamic fundamentalism."
Israel has invested 1.75 million US dollars into immigration efforts in the country, a whopping 90 percent increase from last year.
Meridor said Israel also invested 12 million US dollars for French Jews, 6.5 million of which was to promote immigration, after a series of anti-semitic incidents in the country with the third highest Jewish population after the United States and Israel.
But Israel's ambassador to France, Elie Barnavi, downplayed Tuesday any increase in discrimination against Jews in France and expressed skepticism over the incentives' power to lure immigrants to Israel.
"All polls show a growing integration of the Jewish community ... and reveal that only some 10 percent of the French population has anti-semitic feelings," he told Israel public radio.
"Not a single Jew will immigrate because of this aid. Those who move to Israel will only do so because of a Zionist conviction," he said.
The renewed focus on immigration comes after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that attracting more Jews to Israel would be one of the Jewish state's prime objectives.
"In the coming years, I want to see a million Jews come from Argentina, France, and especially from South Africa," the right-wing leader told journalists in Tel Aviv on November 29.
"The first objective of the government is to bring another million Jews soon," he added, saying the mass immigration "may take 12 to 13 years but it is central, and in my eyes is the most important goal of the government."
Doubts as to whether Israel would be able to find jobs for a wave of new immigrants as the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent were overshadowed by a recent poll showing Israelis in favor of the immigration efforts.
"Eighty percent of Israelis believe that immigration should be encouraged," Meridor said, quoting a December 16 survey by the Jewish Agency that took a random sampling of 443 people.
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