Chairman of the Central Committee of the Zionist – Revisionist Organization of America
The paramount issue confronting the eighteenth World Zionist Congress is how to settle the largest possible number of German and other disfranchised and economically ruined Jews within the shortest time. That issue, however, does not and cannot stand alone. It depends upon and is inseparably linked with another issue: On the one hand the official attitude of Zionists toward Zionism and to the policies of the Power holding the Mandate over the Land of Israel, and, on the other, the attitude of the Mandatory toward the Zionist attitude. The absolute interdependence of these two problems cannot escape any logical thinker. It does not suffice to say, “There are several hundred thousand Jews who should be settled in Palestine in four years. To effect the settlement we need so many millions of dollars.”
If Palestine is conceived as a binational or multi-national country where the Jews are merely entitled to have their “home” among others, the Palestinian Government is perhaps justified in granting five thousand immigration certificates when more than twelve thousand are required and requested by the Jewish Agency. If workers are needed, why may not non-Jews supply the need? Once the bi-national or cultural centre principle is accepted or tacitly agreed to the government should be actually justified in granting no certificates at all. After the Palestinian riots of 1929, Lord Passfield was quick to arrive at precisely this conclusion.
At present the issuance of certificates by the Palestinian Government is determined not only by the absorbtive capacity of the country as the Government sees it, but also by a number of political factors, from which the one that should from a Zionist standpoint determine and subordinate all the others, namely—the government’s legal obligation to build a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine—is totally absent.
“MAGNANIMITY” LIMITATIONS
Immigrants enter the country not by virtue of their right to do so, but by virtue of the good will of the High Commissioner to Palestine. That good will may result in another thousand or two thousand certificates per annum; that good will may also disappear. It would be nothing short of criminal to plan a grandiose undertaking such as transplanting hundreds of thousands of Jews within a brief span of time, and let their admission into Palestine de-
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.
