The Eighteenth World Zionist Congress entered its final sessions tonight with a complete lack of agreement among its factions on leadership of the World Zionist Organization for the next two years and with several vital questions to be settled before adjournment late tonight or tomorrow.
Negotiations among the various factions during the past week, right up to the opening of the session tonight — the first since Thursday — resulted in failure to reach an understanding as to the composition of the executive body to be elected. It seemed definite, however, that Nahum Sokolow, seventy-two year-old president of the organization, would be re-elected in view of the refusal of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, reiterated today, to accept the office..
The commercial agreement concluded with Germany, providing for the export of the capital of Jewish emigrants to Palestine in the form of German goods, was to come in for stormy discussion tonight as Meer Grossman, leader of the Jewish State party, was to renew his attack with a resolution committing all institutions affiliated with the Zionist organization not to have any dealings with Germany until the Reich allows the Jews to leave Germany and remove all their possessions without hindrance.
Grossman, who has declared his dissatisfaction with the reply of the Zionist executive that it had nothing to do with the agreement, will present his resolution following the report on the deal prepared for the consumption of the congress by its political commission after several days of discussion and debate. The report will be in large part based on that given the commission by S. Hoofien, manager of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, which is to act as the clearing and collection agency in the transactions.
Referring to the deal reported in Berlin where Palestine will ship ten million marks worth of oranges to Germany, buying, in exchange, twice that amount of German goods, Hoofien declared that the Anglo-Palestine Bank had nothing to do with this and had never entered into the deal, despite the assertion of the head of the fruit department of the Nazi Land Trade League, that George Halperin, a director of the bank, had negotiated the agreement.
A last-minute appeal to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, former president of the World Zionist Organization, to accept re-election, was made unsuccessfully today by members of the American delegation to the Congress.
Louis Lipsky, Morris Rothenberg and Jacob Fishman, all of New York, who favored the re-election of Dr. Weizmann, wired him at the Czechoslovakian resort where he had been staying that they felt he had deserted them by not attending the Congress and that he had weakened the position of the supporters at the Congress of adherents to the Weizmann policies.
In his reply Dr. Weizmann stated he had no intention of changing his mind and wants to do only work for the relief of German Jews. Dr. Weizmann left for Italy today.
JABOTINSKY CONDEMNS CONGRESS
A condemnation of the decision of the Congress to send a commission to Palestine to investigate reports of alleged terrorism by some of his followers, and a vehement attack on the Zionist Laborites, to whose pressure he ascribes the Congress decision, was made in an interview with the press by Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionists, the extreme right-wing Zionists.
The Congress, in taking such action while the case was still under the jurisdiction of the courts, was-denounced by Jabotinsky as “unexampled in the parliamentary history of civilized nations.”
“The Palestine police,” he charged, “have cooperated with Labor against the arrested Revisionists and the Congress, too, has followed the Laborites in influencing the pending Palestine proceedings.
“I am firmly convinced that the Palestine court will acquit the innocent Revisionists in spite of this Congress foolishness and the action of the Palestine police in sharing private documents with Labor people and private organizations.
RESENTS PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCE
“We had been prepared,” he declared, “to agree to a serious investigation of the truth by the Zionist Organization, but we oppose this dangerous play and demonstrative resolutions which will psychologically influence the judge more than the entire evidence in court.
“The Laborites, I only despise. But we will settle the account with the other delegates. They will deeply regret the damage they have caused and that they have violated free speech against all the Congress rules, and have throttled debate on the German situation although, for years, it had constituted a central Jewish problem.”
S. Hoofien, manager of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, denied reports from Berlin that George Halperin, a director of the bank and prominent Zionist, had negotiated the deal with Germany for a preferential market in Germany for Palestine oranges in exchange for a Palestine market for German goods, and asserted that the bank had nothing to do with the deal.
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.
