NEWS

Resistance and Survival:
The Warsaw Ghetto

Featuring: Benjamin Meed, President
American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Benjamin Meed was an active, member of the
Warsaw Underground. Together with his wife, he
assumed many dangerous missions on
both sides of the ghetto walls.

Tuesday, May 12, 1992
7:30 P.M.
Janice Charach Epstein Gallery
Jewish Community Center, West Bloomfield

View "A Day In The Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip In Hell,"
a stirring exhibit of photographs taken by a young Nazi
soldier on his day off — his birthday — from duty in the
Warsaw Ghetto

Sponsored by

The Jewish Community Council

Free of Charge

Everyone Welcome

On this 44th Anniversary of Israel's Independence--
let us strive to fulfill the prophecy of her
greatest and most visionary leader:

44 Israel must

discern the
needs of the
hour... but not limit our visual
horizons, nor generations
yet to comm.',
David B en-Gurion

AMERICAN ASSOCIATES, BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

Great Lakes Region
53 West Jackson Blvd. #1539
Chicago, II 60604
(312) 939-2139

52

FRIDAY, MAY 8, 1992

Chairman, Arnold D. Kamen
Assoc. Chairman, Seyrnoure Weiner
Regional Director, Howard B. Lazar
1992 Gala Dinner Chair, Lynn Foster

Ministry Report
Critical Of Sharon

Jerusalem (JTA) — A
report scathingly critical of
Ariel Sharon's Housing Min-
istry threatened this week to
explode into a major scandal
for Likud less than two mon-
ths before the elections.
Accusations of corruption,
maladministration and pro-
fessional incompetence by
State Comptroller Miriam
Ben-Porat triggered
demands for Mr. Sharon to
resign.
Ms. Ben-Porat, a former
member of the High Court of
Justice, has asked Attorney
General Yosef Harish to
consider criminal prosecu-
tion in three areas related to
the Housing Ministry's ac-
tivities.
While Mr. Sharon did not
specifically deny the comp-
troller's report, he said he
put a halt to improper prac-
tices whenever they were
brought to his attention. If
officials and directors of
government companies are
found to have been at fault,
they will have to "bear their
responsibility," he told
reporters.
The comptroller, the
state's official watchdog,
traditionally exercises broad
autonomy and is non-
partisan.
Ms. Ben-Porat said while
the government's crash pro-
gram to provide homes for
immigrants was praisewor-
thy in principle, it spawned
administrative malpractice.
She observed that the min-
istry's choice of contractors
for some projects was suspect
or made on ill-considered or
arbitrary grounds.
Suspicions often were
related to Likud political
favoritism, the comptroller
said.
She singled out Limor
Livnat of Likud, whom she
accused of using her Sharon-
appointed, non-salaried posi-
tion as head of the ministry's
Housing Authority, to curry
favor with members of the
party's Central Committee.
Ms. Livnat said that she
rejected the comptroller's
findings and questioned her
good faith.

Y ediot Achronot' s

respected economics editor,
Sever Plotzker, said the
charges against Mr. Sha-
ron's ministry were the most
serious he could recall in
decades of comptroller's
reports. According to Mr.
Plotzker, Mr. Sharon should
step down.
Asked whether Mr. Sharon
might have to quit, Prime

Minister Yitzhak Shamir
said, "I hope not."
The report is a grave em-
barrassment to Likud, espe-
cially in light of the govern-
ing party's efforts to delay
its publication until after
the June 23 elections.
Ms. Livnat and other
Likud figures sought to di-
vert media attention to an-
other section of the comp-
troller's report that deals
with massive waste at
Agrexco, the government-
owned agricultural export
company which was headed
by a-Labor minister,
Avraham Katz-Oz, in the
Likud-Labor unity govern-
ment two years ago.
The comptroller also
criticized the Housing Min-
istry's handling of the im-
migrants' needs on a profes-
sional basis.
She found there had been
no agreement between the
ministry and the Treasury
on the ministry's basic

He said he put a
halt to improper
practices
whenever they
were brought to
his attention.

budget for 1991, for which
she held the Treasury, too,
partly to blame. The Hous-
ing Ministry exceeded its
budget by $66 million, she
wrote.
Ms. Ben-Porat was sharply
critical of the way the Hous-
ing Ministry imported
caravans and mobile homes
in large numbers.
Many of the units were
erected and left uninhabited
for months; many were
bought from substandard
suppliers without adequate
prior examination of their
records.
The cost of erecting the
mobile units exceeded the
cost of constructing fixed
buildings, the comptroller
said.
As for fixed-building work,
the report said much of it
was substandard and had
not withstood the recent
winter storms.
They were sited wrongly,
without proper planning and
in some cases violated plan-
ning and zoning laws.
Mr. Sharon, while vowing
there would be no coverup of
wrongdoing, reacted impa-
tiently to the professional
criticism. He told reporters