More than 20,000 people crowded into Madison Square Garden, today adopted a resolution demanding the immediate abolition of the British White Paper and calling for “the opening wide of the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration and settlement, to the end that the Jews may reconstitute Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth.”
The resolution also greeted “with satisfaction and gratitude” the statement of President Roosevelt that the American Government has never given its approval to the White Paper, and that when future decisions are reached, full justice will be done to those who seek a Jewish National Home. “We trust that the President will use his good offices and the high authority of his position to the end that this full justice which he so earnestly desires may speedily be achieved,” the resolution stated. It also urged passage “at the earliest moment consistent with the exigencies of the war effort” of the Palestine resolutions now pending in both Houses of Congress.
The resolution expressed confidence in Prime Minister Churchill’s “loyal adherence to the principles of the Balfour Declaration,” and appealed to the Prime Minister to give early effect to his words of 1939 by bringing about the abrogation of the White Paper. “All men of good will, Christians and Jews alike, whose spiritual traditions spring from those sources which nourish everything which the Western World holds sacred and dear, unite in looking upon the restoration of Palestine to the Jewish people as a vital and indispensable element in the restoration of righteousness to humanity,” the resolution said.
Held under the auspices of the American Zionist Emergency Council, the meeting was addressed by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, Senator Robert F. Wagner, Senator Robert A. Taft, Senator Alben B. Barkley, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Dorothy Thompson and Matthew Woll, vice-president of the American Federation of Labor.
A demand that the British White Paper which prohibits new Jewish immigration to Palestine after March 31, “be consigned to the flames,” was voiced by Sen. Wagner. “If the tortured Jews of Europe are not to be allowed to go to Palestine, where shall they go?” the Senator asked.
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.
