Jabotinsky Demands Revision of Immigration Schedule for Palestine

A demand that the “humiliating” labor immigration schedules allowed by the Palestine government for Jewish settlement in Palestine be rejected, was made today by Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder and leader of the Revisionist, right-wing Zionist organization. His statement was issued in behalf of the executive bodies of the Revisionist Union and the Brith Trumpeldor, Revisionist youth group. He revealed that the the two groups would refuse to accept their share of the certificates. “At a moment when innumerable sons and daughters of martyred world Jewry are striving toward Palestine, while, at the same time, Palestine thirsts for and can absorb tens of thousands of Jewish working hands, the Mandatory Power (Great Britain) offers us a miserable schedule of actually not more than three thousand certificates for the whole period of six months,” the statement pointed out.

“This gesture, which can be described only as an act of wilful sabotage, has definitely unmasked the intolerable absurdity and injustice of the whole schedule system under which the number of admitted immigrants is determined, not by the actual demands of the employers and the country generally, but by the short-sightedness and arbitrariness of bureaucracy.

“It would be incompatible both with the dignity and interests of Zionism once again to sanction this system by accepting this mischievous grant which so strikingly embodies all its vices. The system must be liquidated once and for all and now is the moment to do it by rejecting the humiliating schedule.

“Though many thousands of our youths trained for pioneering have for years been waiting their turn to enter Palestine, the Revisionist Union and the Brith Trumpeldor have decided to take the first step by refusing to avail themselves of their share of the present schedule and their representatives and Palestine offices all over the world will not participate in the procedure of its distribution.

“Despite all the bitter depth of our internecine dissensions, we refuse to believe that any Zionist body, whether the Zionist Executive or the various parties within the movement will follow, under the circumstances, any course other than our Zionist conscience impels us to choose.”