Terming it a ” constructive solution” of the Arab-Jewish problem in Palestine in the light of the present Jewish situation in Europe and the Arab situation in the Near East, ” Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency who is now on a visit to this country, tonight outlined a program which, he hopes, the major powers will accept in order ” to redress once and for all the historic wrong ” done to the Jews.
The program, summarized by Mr. Shertok in an address delivered at a reception tendered to him at Carnegie Hall by the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, provides : 1. Throw Palestine open to the Jews; 2. Give the Jews power to conduct immigration and settlement on a large scale and enable them to achieve statehood; 3. The Jews are to guarantee full equality of rights and full opportunities to progress to Palestine Arabs; 4. Deal with the widest generosity with the Arab countries and open the way for collaboration between a Jewish Palestine and Arab peoples throughout the Middle East.
“One hears less today of Palestine’s inability to solve the Jewish problem in view of its small size,” Shertok said. “It is generally realized that, if Jews are given a proper chance, they can settle in Palestine in very large numbers. But the difficulty is the Arabs. The question is in which case will a greater injustice be done? If, having achieved independence and security in vast territories, the Arabs had to give up political domination over Palestine, or if the only country where Jews can work out their salvation, were to be closed in their faces? It should not be beyond the capacity of world statesmanship to evolve a constructive synthesis between Jewish and Arab aspirations, which would resolve the conflict.”
Appealing for the abrogation of the White Paper under which Jewish immigration to Palestine will be completely stopped next year, Shertok warned Britain that its White Paper policy “will simply not work.” He enumerated the contributions which the Jews of Palestine have made to the Allied war effort and emphasized that “had the outbreak of the war found two million Jews in Palestine instead of half a million, the whole position of the democratic front in that part of the world would have been different. But even as it is today, Palestine turned out to be a sure bulwark of democracy in the Middle East.” Jews are only one-third of the population of Pales but they are four-fifths of the men provided by Palestine serving today, and ninety-eight percent of the women, he said. He related deeds of bravery performed by Jewish soldiers and stated that their graves were scattered from Tripoli in Syria, to Tripoli in Libya, and from Greece to Eritrea.
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.
