Melchior attacks Jewish Agency officials

The Israeli deputy minister responsible for Diaspora affairs and the fight against anti-Semitism, Michael Melchior, has said that the Jewish Agency for Israel had been hijacked by low-level politicians "who couldn't get jobs." Melchior is quoted by the "Jerusalem Post" as saying that the same officials wielded influence to procure jobs for people they favored "but they are not leaders of anything." Speaking to a forum of representatives of major Jewish organizations convened by Israeli president Moshe Katsav to find new, creative solutions to the crises confronting the Jewish world, Melchior said that the matter would be of no interest to the Israeli public or the Jewish world were it not laced with Likud politics and the disengagement issue.