Council for Judaism Says Truman’s Statement on Palestine is “most Damaging” to Zionism

The American Council for Judaism today issued a statement declaring that President Truman’s recent statement on Palestine is “the most realistic statement to have issued from the White House and the most damaging to Zionist objectives.”

Declaring that “Zionists and non-Zionists would do well to ponder the significance of President Truman’s statement,” the Council says that this statement “led to innumerable interpretations from many sources, Jewish and non-Jewish.”

“It is a matter of considerable regret,” the Council states, “that these interpretations should in so many instances distort the meaning of the President’s utterance beyond recognition. The headlines that have appeared in the Jewish and Yiddish press as to an ‘endorsement’ by the United States of a Jewish state have, as appears from the text, no basis in fact. The Jewish Agency spoke politically not interpretively, when it expressed its gratification at this statement as a proposal ‘to re-establish a national state.”

The Council makes the following points which, it says, substantiate its assertion that the President’s statement has been misinterpreted:

1. The statement indicated the President had “discussed” the subject, but did not indicate that he had voiced his approval; 2 – His statement about America wanting to let as many Jews as possible into Palestine is only a reiteration of the U.S. Government’s support for a more liberal immigration Policy for Palestine; 3 – His further remarks about “maintaining the civil peace” indicate that his position on the Zionist aims is similar to the British White Paper – since he implies that further immigration must depend on agreement of the Arabs from whom the threat to “civil peace” would come; and 4 – The President’s reference to working out the matter “with the British and Arabs for a Jewish state” may mean that agreement on a Jewish state is dependent upon the Palestine Arabs and the neighboring Arab states.