An optimistic note concerning the American public’s attitude towards Zionist demands for a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine was sounded here today by Dr. Chaim Weizmann in his first public statement since his return from the United States.
Addressing a press conference at the Savoy Hotel, Dr. Weizmann said that among American non-Jews – especially in religious and labor circles – there is considerable support for the proposal that Palestine be made a Jewish Commonwealth after the war. Legislative assemblies in twenty states in America adopted resolutions favoring a Jewish Commonwealth prior to his departure from the United States, Dr. Weizmann reported.
“The first results of the elections for the forthcoming American Jewish Conference indicate that the Jews in America are a hundred percent for the reopening of Palestine’s gates for Jewish immigration,” Dr. Weizmann continued. “They are also unanimous in their demand for the revocation of the British White Paper. All Jews in the United States realize that it is impossible to find homes in America and in the British Empire for the uprooted Jews after the war. A minority of them, while opposed to the full Zionist program and to the idea of a Jewish Commonwealth, nevertheless favor Jewish mass-immigration to Palestine.”
SCORES REVISIONIST DEMAND FOR SURRENDER OF PALESTINE MANDATE TO U.S.
Dr. Weizmann expressed regret that the Zionist Revisionists in America placed a paid advertisement in the American press demanding that Britain surrender the Palestine mandate to the United States. Terming the act “most unfortunate,” he added that “America does not want the mandate, and nobody wants to give it to America.”
Reporting on his meeting in New York with Prof. Solomon Mikhoels and Lt. Col. Itzik Feffer, the two Jewish delegates from Russia, Dr. Weizmann said that he had spent three hours with them and added: “I took away the impression that the Jews in Russia are not opposed to Zionism and that they hope that they will establish contact with Jews of other countries in due course.”
Dr. Weizmann termed Arab-Jewish relations “frozen” for the present. He denounced the exaggerations of the Arab propagandists in the United States saying that the Arabs in America are using “fascist methods to distort the truth.” Asked whether he intended to proceed to Palestine, he replied that he would like very much to go there, but he has not yet recovered from his flight from America to London.
Dr. Weizmann stressed that the Jews of the United States, Britain and Palestine are today the only Jewish communities that can voice the demands of the Jewish people with regard to post-war problems. He emphasized that no other Jewish community feels so acutely the tragedy of Jewish extermination in Europe as the Jews of Palestine.
“Despite the setbacks which the Jews have had in the Jewish National Home, they continue to give their best for the war effort, waiting for the day when they can receive masses of returning Jews – the day when the Jewish people will take their place among the nations of the world,” Dr. Weizmann said.
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.
