Palestine Economic Corporation

American-funded economic aid program to Jews in Palestine.

Founded in 1926 by a group of prominent American Jews, including Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the Palestine Economic Corporation provided material aid and technical assistance to Jewish business enterprises in Palestine. Funding was usually in the form of loans or equity investments. Subsidiaries to the corporation included the Palestine Mortgage and Savings Bank and the Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions, which provided funds for low-cost housing and credits to kibbutzim, among other social programs.

Through 1946, the corporation had funded more than ninety enterprises and played a key role in establishing such basic industries as chemicals, citrus products, paper, plastics, and tires. The corporation later changed its name to PEC Israel Economic Corporation. By 1967 it had eleven thousand stockholders, mostly in the United States, with assets of more than $28 million in Israel's industrial, construction, and citrus sectors.

Bibliography

Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York: Schocken, 1989.

— ELIZABETH THOMPSON