Calling upon the United States Government effectively to further President Truman’s request that Great Britain immediately permit 100,000 Jews to enter Palestine, the American Jewish Committee, in a communication to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes yesterday, declared that the prompt settlement of the issue of Jewish immigration has become a matter of life and death for the Jewish servivors of the Hitlerite persecutions in Europe.
The letter, which was signed by Joseph M. Proskauer, president of the American Jewish Committee, and Jacob Blaustein, chairman of its executive committee, states that the request for the immigration of large numbers of Jews into Palestine expresses the will of substantially all American Jews however they may differ otherwise on the Palestine question, and “was approved by the bulk of American public opinion, which saw in it a reaffirmation of America’s traditional sympathy with the oppressed.”
Pointing out that immigration to and settlement in Palestine of a substantial number of Jews would not be hostile to the interests of the Arabs, the American Jewish Committee states that “there is no irreconcilable conflict between Arabs and Jews; rather is it to the interest of both and of their continued progress to cooperate in the promotion of increased living standards and democratic self-government in the Near last. With good will on both sides, supported by a firm attitude on the part of the United Nations, the two communities can live side by side in harmony and peace.”
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.
