The British Government will neither reduce nor augment Jewish immigration into Palestine until March, the Marquess of Duffer in and Ava, Colonial Under secretary, advised the House of Lords during a full-dress debate on the Holy Land question today. He warned all concerned with “this horrible question” of anti-Semitism in Germany to look elsewhere than Palestine for a solution of the refugee problem.
Although pessimistic on the immediate aid Palestine could give to German and Polish Jews, the Government spokesman urged the Jews to work for the success of the forthcoming British-Arab-Jewish conferences seeking a solution of the Palestine question, “and then per haps Palestine will be able to make a larger contribution to the problem than it is able to do at present.”
Lord Dufferin announced that the British Government was entering the conferences bound by the Balfour Declaration and the mandate, but would not hesitate to alter the mandate’s terms if an agreement was reached or if it was necessary for the Government to impose a settlement. He turned down suggestions that the Government take a more active and positive lead in the London discussions, after hearing Labor Opposition Leader Lord Snell attack the Government’s policy and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Viscount Samuel and ex-Colonial Secretary Lord Harlech plead for justice for Arabs and Jews alike.
Asserting that the Government would not enter the parleys with any set plan, Lord Dufferin said: “We believe on the contrary that every subject should be open for discussion, and we think that only harm will be done if His Majesty’s Government attempt to confine the speeches or suggestions of delegates into any one channel, however wide.”
“The Government enters the discussion in full consciousness and bound by the obligations of the Balfour Declaration and mandate,” he said. “Should it happen that an agreement is reached by both sides on a basis that requires alteration of the mandate, then I do not think we would hesitate to take proper steps to obtain alteration. Similarly, should an agreement not be reached and a settlement have to be imposed, we would hold ourselves equally free to take the appropriate steps making a similar alteration.”
“I do ask you,” he concluded, “not to take the easy course by believing on the one hand that Jewish ideals are only a question of money changers trying to get back into the temple or by believing that the Arab revolt is simply a matter of bandits out to loot and plunder.”
SNELL CRITICIZES GOVERNMENT POLICY
Lord Snell criticized the Government for not suppressing Arab disorders, which he called fundamentally anti-British rather than anti-Jewish. He demanded that the Government guarantee the Balfour Declaration and Jewish rights in Palestine and that it announce and carry out a clear policy. He also demanded to know why the United States had not been invited to the conferences on Palestine.
“Our experience in empire building,” Lord Snell said, “and our success, which has been extraordinary, is the envy and admiration of others, and to place in contrast with that record our administration in Palestine is an affront to our own history and an unmerited humiliation before the world. I do not consider that the present Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, is a proper target for these shafts of criticism. He was called to deal with a patient who was most sick, whose illness had been wrongly diagnosed, and whose wounds had been poisoned by false treatment. Mr. MacDonald has the closest knowledge of this problem. He also brings to it a keen sympathy for both races involved.
“The first essential is the restoration of order. Our inability to preserve order has cost us dear in life, substance and reputation. The source of organized violence is perfectly well known. That source managed to escape. If he had been a poor Arab with only a bag of meal left to feed his family, his escape would not have been so easy. This reign of terror in Palestine afflicts the decent Arab people as well as the Jewish people. This agitation is not fundamentally anti-Semitic, it is anti-British.
“The second of the essential needs is that the Government, quite firmly, definitely and finally, should make it understood that the Balfour Declaration is not going to be with drawn and that the Jews are not aliens or intruders in Palestine, but that the mandate gives them a special position which we are bound to recognize and honor. The third essential is that our policy should not only be clear and consistent, but should be enforced and carried out without regard to what either one party in one place or any set of officials may think.”
Welcoming the proposed round-table conference as “the first obviously sensible thing” that had been done, Lord Snell continued: “Conciliation has a technique of its own that should be brought into this matter. What is the claim of Arab leaders outside Palestine to sit at the conference? Why not bring other countries in? What has the United States done that she has not been asked to participate in the discussion? She has certain treaty rights in this matter which should not be overlooked.”
Taking up specifically the question of Jewish refugees, Lord Snell said: “There are tens of thousands of tortured human beings knocking at our doors, which we refuse to open, Jewish families already in Palestine are to be foster parents to sustain 10,000 Jewish children whose lives at present make one sick to contemplate. The British Government so far as I know have not made any response to this appeal.”
He also appealed to the Arab people, described as “a generous and chivalrous race,” saying that they had a vast territory, mostly unexploited, to share in the redemptive work which was so urgent. Lord Snell asked the House to remember that a large Jewish population enthusiastically loyal to this country “might be of immense use to us in coming days.”
LORD SAMUEL ANALYZES ZIONIST MOVEMENT
Viscount Samuel, who was High Commissioner in Palestine from 1920 to 1925, spoke after Lord Snell. He said the Zionist movement, taken as a whole, had from the beginning misconceived to a great extent the facts of the Arab situation. The strength of the support for the Zionist movement had been derived, he said, mainly from the masses of the Jewish population in Poland, Rumania and the United States. They were remote from the scene and had no intimate knowledge of the circumstances in Palestine, he asserted.
“Intent on their own movement,” Lord Samub declared, “and full of fervor and enthusiasm they have set on foot one of the most remarkable and most inspired idealistic movements of modern times. They had eagerly been looking to the prospect of a fresh place of refuge for the oppressed in Eastern Europe, but with their fervor they had been impelled forward so that they did not even see the obstacles that stood in their path and were even impatient and indignant with anyone who said that the obstacles were real and ventured to suggest the right means of overcoming them.”
“In view of the coming conference,” Viscount Samuel declared at another point, “we should be anxious not to embarrass the Colonial Secretary in any way. He is handling a most difficult and delicate problem in a spirit of resolution and wise circumspection. The present situation is injurious to British prestige. It does damage to the strategic position of the whole empire and it shocks the religious sentiment of all Christian people.”
‘SYMPATHY WITH JEWS STRONGER,’ CANTERBURY ASSERTS
The Archbishop of Canterbury said: “If there is to be any success in this conference each of the parties must abate some of their extreme claims. None of us is wanting in full sympathy with the Arabs, their history, claims and deep sentiment about Palestine, however much we may deplore their recent excesses. But at present our sympathy with the Jews must be stronger.
“In this time when hundreds of thousands of them are being driven from their homes in Europe by new and relentless persecution on which I forbear to comment and are being treated everywhere with every sort of ignominy, treated as outcasts incapable of any kind of civil right, is this a time to whittle away anything that they hope for or desire in the phrase ‘a national home’ in Palestine?”
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.
