Dr. Silver Confirms Report He Submitted Resignation to Jewish Agency Executive

Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council and president of the Zionist Organization of America, today confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the report that he submitted his resignation as a member of the Jewish Agency executive.

In a statement published today in the Boston Traveler, Dr. Silver said: “There have been reports in the public press lately that the Jewish Agency has proposed the partition of Palestine into two states–one Arab and one Jewish. The only Zionist body competent to revise the basic Zionist program is the Congress of the World Zionist Organization. This Congress has not met since 1939. Between sessions only the Actions Committee has authority to act for the movement. This body has not yet met to discuss this matter and has not authorized any such proposals as are reported in the press.”

Dr. Silver referred to the recent charges voiced by Bartley Crum, former member of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee on Palestine, who said that officials in the State Department have consistently frustrated American policy on Palestine. “Unfortunately,” Dr. Silver said, “Crum’s charges are all too true –if by American policy is meant the oft-repeated public statements of Presidents of the United States. I have personally had occasion to register a similar protest with Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and Loy Henderson, Chief of the Middle East Division, last May. Prior to that time the American Zionist Emergency Council presented to Secretary of State Byrnes a lengthy and detailed memorandum on this same subject.

“There has been a long record of amazing and bewildering incongruities between what the President of the United States says and what the State Department does,” Dr. Silver continued. “We refuse to accept the alternative that the President of the United States and the State Department have a tacit understanding to give the Jews of the United States the run around.”

Dr. Silver emphasized that his criticism of the actions of the British Government should not be interpreted as anti-British. “We are not anti-British,” he declared. “We all have the highest regard and admiration for the people of Great Britain, for the high concepts and standards of democracy and law which they have achieved, and for the courage and bravery of their fighting men. But the best among them, I am sure, would be the first to acknowledge that their governments have not always practiced these principles in their international relations, and more especially in relation to the subject peoples within their empire. This unfortunately is true of all empires. But men who love freedom and justice and who, like us, are fighting for the right of an ancient and honorable people, which has suffered so much, to find peace at last in its historic home, cannot help but record that their present government is pursuing a woefully wrong-headed and dangerously blundering policy in regard to Palestine of which they themselves, loyal to their tradition, cannot approve.”