American Zionists Satisfied with Decision on Agency Report

Agreement with the decision of the General Zionist Council at its session in Berlin to adopt the recommendations of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission, was voiced by the “New Palestine,” official organ of the Zionist Organization of America. In an editorial in its forthcoming issue, the paper writes:

‘We maintain that the report does no violence to any fundamental Zionist truth, notwithstanding all the pother in the press. We do not mean thereby to imply that we are in full accord with everything contained in the report, or that it is the last word in a Palestine program. Far from it. But to proclaim that the report is a ‘surrender’ of Zionism or a ‘spiritual Uganda’ is as demagogic as it is untrue. That the Actions Committee finally came to this conclusion is indicated by the overwhelming majority with which the report was adopted, although not without a week of great struggle and conflict.

“The report contains fifty-two recommendations. Of these, fourteen relate to action to be taken by the Government. With these recommendations none of the parties in Zionism can have any quarrel. They state the Zionist case excellently and with firmness, and should serve as the basis for greater cooperation on the part of the Palestine Government. The remaining thirty-eight recommendations deal mainly with administrative, financial, agricultural and industrial questions, concerning which there may be differences of opinion. In essence they do not in the slightest affect any fundamental Zionist principle, except perhaps insofar as the report does not place sufficient emphasis on certain features of Zionist work, as for example, the Jewish National Fund, which has become so thoroughly integrated with the Zionist idea that it is difficult to conceive Zionism without it. We may perhaps disagree with the form in which one or another recommendation is made, as indicating a certain lack of understanding or appreciation of the peculiar conditions obtaining in Zionist work. In their concern for ‘sound business principles’ the Commissioners have frequently overlooked important factors which perhaps constitute the strength of Zionist work, both in the Galuth and in Palestine. The crities who belabor these weak elements in the report are guilty of a grave injustice both to the Commissioners and to the experts, when they invoke Zionist idealogy as a weapon with which to hit at the report. It is precisely because there are non-Zionists who do not see eye to eye with us that we are endeavoring to establish the extended Jewish Agency. It is precisely because we want them to share in the work of upbuilding that we have embarked upon a policy which frankly admits of the possibility of compromise in technical method. And when compromise is suggested without, we repeat, any violence to the tenets of Zionism the critics sound the alarm against the ‘degeneration of Zionism.’ “