Fifteen members of the 25-man House Foreign Affairs Committee were on record today with a request to the State Department to protest the British-White Paper on Palestine as a violation of the 1924 Anglo-American treaty under which Americans had invested more than $100,000,000 in Palestine.
Headed by Representative Hamilton Fish (Rep., N.Y.), the members placed in the Congressional Record yesterday a statement declaring the British plan to restrict Jewish immigration to the Holy Land and fix the Jews as a permanent minority was “a clear repudiation of the convention between the United States and Great Britain with respect to Palestine, dated Dec. 3, 1924.”
The signatories included seven Republicans and eight Democrats: Republicans — Fish, N.Y.; Tinkham, Mass; Rogers, Mass.; Barton, N.Y.; Corbett, Penn.; Vorys, Ohio; Schiffler, W.Va. Democrats — Bloom, N.Y.; Luther A. Johnson, Texas; Kee, W.Va.; Richards, So. Car; Robert G. Allen, Penn; Burgin, No. Car.
Their statement declared that the 1924 convention provided that nothing in it should be affected by any modification of the League mandate on Palestine unless previously assented to by the United States. Declaring the United States had not been consulted on the new policy, the statement continued:
“We desire to point out to the members of the House and to call to the attention of the State Department that Americans have invested over $100,000,000 in Palestine, relying upon the treaty between Great Britain and our Government, and upon which treaty they had the right to rely. It is the duty of the American Government to protect these rights by proper protest and to see to it that the treaty is carried out in good faith. As members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we respectfully request the State Department to advise the British Government that the contemplated action, if carried out, will be regarded as a violation of the British-American convention and will be viewed with disfavor by the American people.”
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.
