22

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, April 5, 1985

NEWS

New Leader, Emphasis
For Israeli Settlements

BEN

CHUCK

BY WENDY ELLIMAN

Special to The Jewish News

MORT

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01

.••:;•mit

Jerusalem — We all know what
new brooms do, and how the
young generation of today be-
haves. There are also rigid
stereotypes about Israel's leaders,
and fixed ideas about its North
African immigrants.
But if you insist on old
entrenched attitudes, you will
have a hard time getting to know
Nissim Zvili. Zvili, who succeeded
Ra'anan Weitz as head of the
Jewish Agency's Rural Settle-
ment Department last June, can
help you to stop thinking in
stereotypes forever.
Zvili — at 41, some 30 years
Weitz's junior — is a farmer and a
paratrooper in the reserves. He is
also one of a growing number of
men and women from Israel's new
generation taking up leadership
positions throughout the life of
the country.
"I have the greatest respect for
Ra'anan," Zvili said. "No one
could have done what he did. He
laid down a magnificent founda-
tion, and in many areas, I'll be
following him. But I don't see my-
self as stepping into Ra'anan's
shoes. I come with my own work
shoes, rimy own style. I'm from a
different aliyah, and a different
generation." .
Zvili spent his first ten years in
the Tunisian fishing village of
Mahadia. He arrived in Israel
with his family in 1954, part of the
great waves of immigrants surg-
ing into the young country, and
his family's first contact with the
Jewish Agency was immediate —
as beneficiaries of the Agency's
human need programs.
"My father, who'd been a mer-
chant in Mahadia, became a
farmer on Moshav Olesh, near
Natanya, with the help of Jewish
Agency Settlement Department
instructors," say Zvili. "And I be-
came an Israeli at the Youth
Aliyah village of Neurim."
By 1982, when Zvili became a
candidate for Settlement De-
partment head, he was growing
cotton on Moshav Olesh, and had
been active in the Moshav move-
ment and the Israel Labor Party
for over a decade. Once selected,
he undertook an 18-month study
program at Oxford, Cambridge
and Rehovot, designed by Weitz
himself, to learn how to direct Is-
rael's rural settlement program
— the planning and building of
agricultural and industrial kib-
butzim and moshavim within Is-
rael's pre-1967 borders.
Zvili learned well, and he comes
to the job with clear ideas about
what he wants to accomplish.
"We haven't enough money to
do everything," he says. "Inflation
and rising costs are reducing the
Jewish Agency's real budget year
by year. So we must slow down the
pace of settlement and consolidate
what we've built.
"There's no point putting more
dots on the map if those settle-
ments are socially and eco-
nomically unstable because we
can't give them a good enough
start," he asserts. "This is a radi-
cal change for a department that
has always prided itself on how
fast it has built. But times have

Nissim Zvili: Shaking up the
settlements.

changed, too. I believe that con-
solidating is as much of a chal-
lenge — and a greater necessity
now — as building anew."
Planning is also a priority for
Zvili. "We'll be drawing up a set-
tlement program for the year
2,000 and beyond," he said.
"Technological advande is chang-
ing the whole settlement
enterprise, and we must prepare
ourselves for the future. There are
still young people in Israel and
•abroad looking for the challenge
of building the land, and we must
ensure that their energies are not
squandered."
In everything that the depart-
ment plans and does, Zvili looks
hopefully toward Diaspora Jews
for partnership and involvement.
"By 'involvement' I'm not talk-
ing only about money," he said,
"substantial though the sums
raised are. It's more than that
Jews worldwide are part of what
goes on here. We're traveling
companions on the same journey,
and we must act together."

United Jewish Appeal

Collaborators
Flee To Israel

Kiryat Shmona (ZINS) — A
number of Lebanese who cooper-
ated with the Israeli army have
been permitted to enter Israel and
settle. The Lebanese were afraid
of reprisals in the wake of Israeli
withdrawals.
In the past year, some 60 col-
laborators have been murdered.

Sotheby's Sale

Jerusalem — The new Israel
office of Sotheby's gallery will --.
conduct a sale in May as part of
Jewish Art Week in Jerusalem.
The two-day sale ofJudaica is the
first event in Israel for Sotheby's,
the British gallery which was re-
cently purchased by Detroiter A.
Alfred Taubman.

