Last update - 00:00 26/09/2007
PM: Jewish Agency still has key role in bringing Jews to Israel
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week reassured the Jewish Agency that Sunday's cabinet decision to fund independent Aliyah organizations would not diminish the Agency's key role in bringing Jews to Israel.
In a letter to Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski on the day the cabinet voted unanimously on the funding, Olmert wrote that he had "given instructions to the responsible authorities to intensify the coordination between the government and the Jewish Agency also in the field of the support the government and the Jewish Agency give to organizations that encourage Aliyah to Israel."
Olmert emphasized "the special and unique role the Agency plays in helping the state decide who is eligible for Aliyah, a role that contributes hugely to the process."
The letter came after the controversial decision to change the status of funding for the independent Aliyah organizations, which for the last three years had been temporary, to a permanent part of the Absorption Ministry?s annual budget. This move was seen as effectively ending the monopoly the Jewish Agency had in encouraging new immigrants to come to Israel and aiding them in the process.
Following the decision, the Agency?s workers union held a stormy meeting that resulted in a letter to Olmert accusing him of "breaking the old agreement between the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel over exclusivity in encouraging Aliyah and belittling the Agency?s experience and its emissaries whose enormous efforts brought three million people from over the world to Israel."
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