A militant war and peace program for Jews the world over, its final objective establishment of a Jewish State numbering millions in Palestine and Transjordan, was outlined by Vladimir Jabotinsky, president of the New Zionist Organization, in an address tonight before a public meeting at Manhattan Center.
A Jewish army fighting on various fronts side by side with other Allied armies, and a Jewish embassy participating in their governing councils, were proposed as wartime necessities by Jabotinsky. He called upon Britain and France to insert in their list of war aims a covenant of equality guaranteeing the futures of minorities, an international convention outlawing anti-Semitism “just as slavery is outlawed,” and “above all the Jewish State” to be realized by immigration of a million Jews to Palestine in one year after the war, and continued mass immigration afterward.
As an immediate program of Jewish action, Jabotinsky proposed achievement of unity by means of a world Jewish headquarters supervising all other bodies, and an intensive program of immigration into Palestine in spite of British restrictions, making the promotion of “illegal” immigration “the great Jewish national sport.”
To the Allied Governments, Jabotinsky addressed a warning that they cannot ignore Jewish needs and aspirations and depend on Jewish sympathy.
Up to now, as a result of the attitude of the Allies, the Jewish fate seems hopeless, Jabotinsky said, not only because of the British Government’s Palestine policy, but because of its “general incapacity” at a time when the victory or defeat of democracy lies in its “obviously unsatisfactory” hands.
“It is obviously assumed,” he said, “that, as the Jews have no choice but to support the enemies of Nazis, there is no need to bother about them. This is a cynical view which deserves a bitter lesson. Sympathies cannot thrive just on the lesser evil principle. And if some allied leaders imagine that they need no sympathies, they will soon be facing bitter disappointment.”
Other scheduled speakers at the meeting were Professor Horace Kallen of the New School for Social Research, Rabbi Morris M. Rose, president of the N.Z.O. in America, and Aanron Propes, Palestinian Revisionist, who spoke in Hebrew. Professor Benjamin Akzin presided.
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.
