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Jewish Agency and National Council Stress They Do Not Contemplate Civil War

January 22, 1947
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The Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Council do not contemplate “shooting between Jews” and are not preparing to assume any police or governmental duties, spokesmen for the two bodies stated today, explaining the significance of the anti-terrorist resolution adopted yesterday by the Council.

The resolution constitutes a serious warning to the extremist groups that force will be used for self-protection, the Agency spokesman added, and merely indicates ways and means of resisting terrorist acts. Pointing out that all the speakers who addressed the Council voiced abhorrence of civil strife, he said the resolution should be interpreted as “a stage of internal self-protection, while showing the dissident groups we mean business.”

The Council spokesman said that the resolution was primarily aimed at the government and the Jewish community, and did not mean that “the Yishuv was prepared for internecine warfare”while the gates of Palestine were closed and Jews were being deported from the country. At the same time, anxious as it is to avoid the use of force, Palestine Jewry cannot countenance a reign of terror directed against itself, he added.

Some 2,000 visaless Jews interned on Cyprus today agreed to be transferred from their present tent camps to winter quarters elsewhere on the island after they had received assurances that they would be permitted freedom of movement between camps. Earlier, they had insisted that they would stay out the winter under canvas rather than go into camps where they could not visit friends whom they had met during their long struggle to avade Nazi killers and their journey across Europe and the Mediterranean to Palestine.

A Jewish waiter at the officers’ club of the British woman’s auxiliary forces in Jerusalem has been discharged because the officers did not wish their conversations overheard by a Jew.

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