The wave of Zionist affirmation that has been steadily growing since the issuance of the White Paper displayed itself as still mounting when, on Monday evening, over four thousand people gathered at Mecca Temple to listen to Menachem Mendel Ussishkin, world president of the Jewish National Fund, here from Jerusalem on a campaign visit. Never before in the history of the Jewish National Fund in New York had there been such a large and enthusiastic mass audience, Emanuel Neumann, president of the American section of the Jewish National Fund, asserted.
Mr. Neuman presided at the meeting. Among the speakers were Robert Szold. president of the Zionist Organization of America; Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland; and Dr. Cyrus Adler, co-chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency. There were messages of greeting and of cooperation from Felix M. Warburg, who protested against the White Paper by resigning as head of the Jewish Agency; and from Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who is ill. Many other Jewish leaders were on the platform, among them Louis Lipsky, Rabbi Mosliansky, and Abe Goldberg.
OUTLINES POLITICAL SITUATION
Emanuel Neuman, acting as chairman, outlined the political situation of the Jewish National Fund. He pointed out that the Jews and Arabs cherish similar nationalist hopes, and that both were promised realization of those hopes by Great Britain. “The Arabs were promised Syria, Iraq, Transjor-dania, the Herjaz, a whole group of states of which Palestine forms a very minute part. The Arabs have received almost all of the territory promised to them. We rejoiced then, and do so now, at this tremendous recognition of Arab aspirations. We ask only that they look upon us in the same spirit. In Palestine it is we who are destined to build.
“Cooperation between these two great branches of the Semitic race is impossible if one of them insists upon imperialist expansion with a total disregard of the minimum rights of the other. Our chief problem is now, and has always been, to secure enough land on which to base our national home.”
Dr. Adler, in welcoming Ussishkin, called him a “stiff-necked son of a stiff-necked people.” Give Ussishkin the means, he said, and he would “quietly and carefully do the job.”
In a stirring, eloquent address, Rabbi Silver characterized the head of the National Fund as a “lighthouse” that steadily guides us through a sea of “melancholy masochistic Messianism.”
Ussishkin followed the Rabbi. The stocky old man arose, strode to the front of the platform, and pushed the speakers’ rostrum out of his way. He wasn’t going to read any paper. He was going to speak to his people. The house rocked with cheers.
“It is ten years since I have been here,” he said. “Jewish blood has flowed in Palestine four times during those ten years. Practical and theoretical anti-Semitism has widened and deepened all over the world. But Jewish unity, in those ten years, has become much stronger.
ZIONISM MYSTIC BELIEF
“Four months ago a high English official sat in my office in Jerusalem asking me questions. I said to him, ‘for you English, and for the Arabs, Palestine is a place for questions, investigations, inquiries. For us Jews it is a place for upbuilding. You can help or hinder our work, by your attitude, but you cannot prevent it from eventually being done.’ He asked me for figures, proofs. I said, ‘our Zionism is not a matter of numbers, but of deep mystic belief.’
“For England and for the Arabs, Palestine represents perhaps 1% of their interest. There are from thirty to fifty millions of Arabs from Gibraltar to Damascus. I respect this great people; it has evolved one of the greatest religions in the world; together with us in the middle ages it saved world culture. It has its centers in Damascus, and Mecca, and Cairo, but not in Jerusalem.
“For us, Palestine represents 100% of our interests. Without the hope of a cultural center in Palestine, where a million Jews will create a new learning and civilization, we are dead.
“Our Mandate is the Bible. It gives us Palestine, from the sea to the desert. We will not recognize diplomatic dissections.”
Referring to the Arab question, Mr. Ussishkin said he informed his questioner that it was “born in a Government house.”
He pointed out that the British, while criticizing the fact that the Jewish National Fund made land the unalienable property of the Jewish people, said nothing of the Wakf lands, that do the same for Arab-owned territory.
PRAISES LABOR IDEAL
Then he spoke rousingly of the labor ideal. “Will you find in your England a worker who has set himself to the ideal of staying on the land, refusing to climb higher in the social ladder than the rung of the laboring class? You must respect our workers, and not slander them!”
“Our work now is harder than that of Moses,” said Ussishkin. “Moses led the Jews out of one Egypt. We must lead them out of many nations. He took them from hard work to comparative plenty. We must lead them from soft seats to lives of hardship. We are Jews, we reverse all things, and conquer. Other colonizations go from small poor countries to large rich ones, we go from large rich countries to a barren, tiny place. Other people go from the country to the city. We move from the city to the soil.
“But stone by stone, dunam by dunam, we must keep on building. We must have our feet firmly on the ground—and first we must own the ground to stand on. God has created a political crisis in Palestine at the same moment that he created a financial crisis in America. The American Jews must remember that when a man has an only child dying, he pawns his very coat in order to buy medicine for the child. Palestine is our child. Medicine is needed at once. There will always be Jews to go to Palestine, but we may not always be able to get Palestine for the Jews.”
MESSAGE FROM WARBURG
The following message from Felix M. Warburg was read: “May I add to the host of greetings which have reached you from so many sources, a word of welcome on your arrival here, in behalf of the Jewish National Fund.
“The stalwart courage you have always evinced in the face of obstacles should stand you and us in good stead in these trying days, when the mood of discouragement affects so many.
“The cause of the upbuilding of Palestine through all of its constructive channels of service today, more than ever before, requires the most earnest effort and the most harmonious cooperation of all groups and personalities. Apart from problems of governmental discussions, both the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Keren Kayemeth Leisrael are faced with the duty of meeting the needs of their day to day programs.
“In the building up of a strong and helpful sentiment and in the promotion of sympathetic collaboration in this cause, we know that you will bring to bear all of your strength and energy.”
RABBI SILVER’S SPEECH
“Wherever I think of Mr. Ussishkin, a phrase from one of our Prophets comes to my mind: ‘Behold, I will make thee like a threshing sledge, having sharp teeth: you will break through mountains and beat them into small pebbles, a sharp threshing sledge and the hills you will make like plains.’ Ussishkin is like a ‘Morag Chorutz’, and at such times as these, my friends, we require men of that type—in this period of storm and confusion, with sentiments of abdication and defeatism in the air, with a babel of voices which take counsel not from hope and courage but from fear and despair all around us; coupled in some quarters with a sort of melancholy masochistic Messianism and a universal pessimism, at such times of confusion and uncertainty, it is fine to be able to look up to a lighthouse that stands there imperturbable, steady, sure, and that lighthouse is Menachem Ussishkin.
“I am glad he came here this time for we need him, and I am glad he came as he did come, for the Jewish National Fund, because there is no agency, my friends, which so completely and perfectly symbolizes the high ideal of our movement as the Jewish National Fund. It is most beloved. It is closest to the heart of our people—and why?—because, it has set for itself two objectives, each one of them reminiscent of the noblest traditions of our race; each one of them voicing the highest prophetic aspirations of our people:
LAND SETTLEMENT PARAMOUNT
“First, to settle Jews on the land in Palestine, to ground their life again in the soil, to normalize, stabilize and tranquilize Jewish life again by giving it an agricultural basis, to undo, if possible, some of the mischief which the age-long predominantly urban mode of life of our people has done to our souls and minds: to sink our roots deep down again into the nourishing soil of mother earth. That is the first ideal of the Jewish National Fund. And the second one is to preserve that land which is to be tilled by Jewish labor in perpetuity for the Jewish people. The land is to be acquired by the Jewish people, not as the hobby of a few philanthropists but through the sacrificial offerings of millions of our people, because it is to be the inalienable property of the Jewish people. In other words, no land speculation, no absentee landlordism, no profiteers draining the surplus value of the unearned increment of the land but only he who tills the soil “b’zehath apo” (by the sweat of his brow) shall enjoy the vield of the land.
“That is Jewish prophecy as I understand the message of our prophets, and that I make bold to say is the ideal toward which every civilized country is moving today, and up to recently this effort was applauded by everyone. It was one thing in our program about which we were most praised and most applauded, but today that very item has been attacked, and by whom?—not by reactionary agrarians, not by conservatives who have vested interests to protect, not by liberals who are not sure of what they want, but by Laborites, by Socialists, by the British Labor Party speaking through its spokesmen Passfield and MacDonald.
BRITAIN BETRAYS JEWS
“We had to wait for a quarter of a century to be attacked. It is they who point the finger of scorn and accusation against the new social order of agricultural centres which we have been attempting to build in Palestine, and against this provision to preserve the land as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. In so doing, they betray not us, for we go on, but themselves, for they repudiate their own position, their own creed.
“Lord Passfield before he became Lord Passfield, when he was only Sidnev Webb. wrote a constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain. an ideal constitution for the Great Britain which is to be in the days to come when it becomes a Socialist Commonwealth. In this constitution, Lord Passfield, or Sidney Webb, not only advocates the nationalization of the land but advocates the expropriation of the land for purposes of nationalization. I read from #is book printed in 1920: ‘The community will let no vested interest stand in he way of improvement. It will expropriate without remorse individual owners from their land, and house property, their factories and their enterprises, whenever this course seems to promote the general well-being, offering them, of course, compensation which shall come out of the taxes of other property owners.’
“Now, when we set about trying to acquire land for the national possession of our people, we did it through no ‘expropriation without remorse,’ we did it without legislation, without compulsion, without threat. We bought land which was gladly sold to us and we paid for it. Now that we are trying to realize this ideal of Lord Passfield without doing harm to anyone, without evicting a soul, without dispossessing a soul, we are being criticized for doing the very thing which Lord Passfield would like to do in England, if he could.
QUOTES MACDONALD’S BOOK
“And what did Mr. MacDonald say about land nationalization? In his book called, ‘The Social Unrest,’ Mr. MacDonald writes: ‘the most obvious directions in which the program of nationalization is to be applied, to begin with, are the land, the mines and the railways. Nationalization is being promoted in order to retain for social use benefits designed for the whole nation, to keep increases of wages in the pockets of the individual worker and to prevent exploitation. The policy of nationalization is designed to retain in the pockets and the living standards of the people the gains which under the present conditions are being put into other pockets. Nationalization does not attempt the impossible. It does not propose to set aside economic rules. It proposes to make it an ally of legislation, and it is the only policy which does so.’
“And so, Mr. MacDonald and Lord Passfield, before they became enmeshed and entangled in British imperialism spoke tonight, that the land which God created is for the benefit of all who toil and not for the benefit of the few exploiters. It remained for these Laborites and Socialists to attack us on yet another score that has to do with the National Fund—the principle of self-labor. Who would ever think that Socialists would attack the principle of self-labor? That is exactly what they have done. When we established colonies decades ago which were not built on the principle of self-labor but which did employ Arab labor, non-Jewish tourists who used to visit Petach Tikvah, Rishon le Zion and other colonies would go away with a slight twinkle in their eyes and knowing looks and say, ‘aha, the Jews do in Palestine exactly what they are doing in Warsaw, in Berlin, in New York. They are exploiting other people. They are not doing the hard work, they are trying to build the Jewish National Homeland with Arab sweat and Arab labor.’ They sneered at us for it.
SEES INCONSISTENCY
“And so, when the third Aliah was to begin, when a new movement of young Jewish pioneers was about to begin, that movement of the chalutzim which brought romance into our movement, which brought the epic quality of grandeur and magnificance into our movements, that sacrificial loyalty which gave us our first legendary heroes, which made Palestine a singing laboring country, when that movement began, these young men found that they would build Palestine with their own sweat and blood. But now we are asked by Socialists, by a Socialist government (here a voice from the audience interrupted and said, “ex-Socialist,” and Rabbi Silver answered, “ex-Socialist”—right). Now we are asked to abandon this self-respecting upbuilding principle of self-labor, and go back and employ cheap Arab labor in the building of our Homeland.
“Inconsistent?—of course it is inconsistent, my friends, as inconsistent as it is to have Ramsay MacDonald in 10 Downing Street and Ghandi in prison; as inconsistent as when he wrote and preached for freedom for India and then put 10,000 of them in prison for asking what he himself thought they had a perfect right to ask. And here you have 240,000,000 Hindus, not 180,000 Jews—240,000,000 Hindus on the land, who have lived there for hundreds of thousands of years, who cannot be called immigrants, who also were promised independence during the emergency of the last war, who are also helpless at this moment in getting their just demands met. But they are prepared. They know how to wait. They are going to wait. They have discovered the secret of saying to a threatened act of injustice, ‘Non-possimus,’ ‘we cannot, we will not yield.’ They will stand up by the hundreds and thousands, and they will be beaten down by the constabulary, by staves and sticks until they are senseless, and when they are down, others will come to take their place, and still others, and still others, and this non-resistance to injustice, this will that does not yield to force, that will break British imperialism in India.
WILL IGNORE WHITE PAPER
“What are we going to do? Well, in the first place, we are going to ignore the White Paper. It wasn’t written for us, in the first place. It was written for the Arabs, to appease them, to satisfy their irreconcileables. It wasn’t written to meet our legitimate aspirations, our sensitiveness, our national pride. We weren’t consulted. We reject it.
We reaffirm today, as we did in 1917, as we did in 1897, as we did in 1882, as we did in the year 71, A. D. immediately following the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of our people, we reaffirm our historic claim to Palestine as our National Home, a claim which has now been internationally recognized. We stand by the letter and the spirit of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate. We know how to read. We are an ‘Am Ha-Sefer’, a people that not only reads but studies every word and phrase, and letter. That document which was not drafted in haste and not given as result of momentary impulse, that remains our charter of national independence. We stand by it.
“The British government undertook to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people. Nothing was mentioned in the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate about a national home for the Arab people in Palestine. It said that none of the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities there shall be interfered with — and they have not been interfered with. The Arab has not lost one civil or religious right that he possessed before the Balfour Declaration. It is not a civil right and not a religious right for the Arab to have an Arab national home in Palestine, and their national aspirations, as has been superbly indicated by the chairman, Mr. Neuman, tonight, have
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
