The general strike held yesterday in Jewish Palestine in protest against the restrictive immigration policy of the Palestine government represented every group of Palestinian Jewry. All political differences were forgotten in the just demand for a larger number of immigration certificates for Jewish workers waiting to be admitted to Palestine where the shortage of labor is acute at present.
The Zionists in Poland and other lands joined in this protest against the illiberal immigration policy of the Palestine government.
Palestine is prosperous today because of the work, the enterprises, the sacrifices of the Jewish people. The absorptive capacity of Palestine now fully justifies a liberal immigration policy for Jewish labor seeking a new home and new opportunities in the old home of the Jewish people. The short-sighted Colonial policy affecting Jewish immigration to Palestine at this crucial moment is not in keeping with the pledges contained in the Balfour Declaration or the mandate.
This is the acid test of the mandatory power’s sincerity with regard to the Balfour Declaration. Victims of Nazi Germany and of other lands indulging in economic discrimination on religious grounds are eagerly seeking refuge in Palestine. To them Palestine is the only hope. To them Palestine would be the only salvation. The actual fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration would not only save these refugees from their desperate plight, but would also aid in the progressive development and the increased prosperity of Palestine for all the inhabitants of the land.
Thus far the failure to fulfill the Balfour Declaration as conceived by the author of that declaration has served to intensify friction between Arabs and Jews, for the deluded or mercenary Arab agitators endeavored to convince the Arab masses that Great Britain had never intended to make good its promise to the Jewish people.
If the mandatory power fails in the fulfillment of its obligations and persists in restricting immigration at a time when the “absorptive capacity” of Palestine justifies a very much larger Jewish immigration to Palestine, what becomes of the sanctity of international agreements and covenants?
‘WORST MAN IN EUROPE’
The recent “ritual murder” number of Der Stuermer, published by the German arch Jewbaiter, Julius Streicher of Nuremberg, who had been charged by the Hitler government to organize the anti-Jewish boycott last year, aroused public opinion outside Germany and also disgusted the decent Germans, according to reports in the London Times and other foreign journals. It is believed that after the sharp criticism in the foreign press, sale of this particular issue of Der Stuermer was prohibited in Berlin, where it might fall into hands of foreigners.
The Manchester Guardian wrote:
“It is inconceivable that the new Germany as a whole thinks and feels like Streicher. How long, then, will she allow him to continue?”
The Referee said:
“Streicher knows quite well that every account which he published was a criminal lie. He knew quite well that Jews are not and never have been guilty of ritual murders. He knows, further, that this foul libel on a whole race has in other countries, notably Tsarist Russia, inspired pogroms in which thousands of innocent men, women and children have been massacred. That is the reason, we suspect, why he published his lies; he wants to foment pogroms. Unfortunately, he is the worst man in Europe. But Hitler recently promoted him representative of the Munich government in Bavarian Franconia.”
The Frankfurter Zeitung displayed extraordinary courage in telling the truth in Germany about the effect of the Streicher incitement to pogroms. The Frankfurter Zeitung wrote:
“The ritual murder number of Der Stuermer has created in and outside Germany the stir that was to be expected from its aim and contents; a stir and anger naturally not confined to Jewish circles. It exceeds in its text and pictures anything we have hitherto seen in this way.”
The Russkoye Znamya, the organ of the Black Hundred pogromists under the Tsar, never stooped to such depths in agitating against the Jews as Der Stuermer does now under the Hitler regime. The Nazis stop the sale of this issue of Der Stuermer in Berlin and at the same time promote the publisher to a high and responsible post. The Nazis understand the meaning of such promotion, discounting any explanations that may be made by the Hitler government for foreign consumption.
The London Times writes that “almost every issue of Herr Streicher’s journal Der Stuermer contains at least one personal attack on a named Jew which no impartial reader could construe as anything but an incitement to violence.”
The addition to the ritual murder myths, Der Stuermer is devoting its pages to reproducing extracts from a new version of the “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,” called “Life and Activities of the Jewish Kabal,” just published by the Deutsche Kulturwacht Verlag of Berlin.
These are blossoms of the new Kultur in Naziland.
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.
