Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, told a press luncheon here today that the Jewish Agency was “bewildered at the spectacle of the U.S. spokesmen arguing why the Agency should not be present at United Nations discussions concerning the establishment of the Jewish National Home.”
“We had assumed,” he said, “on the basis of public pronouncements of our government, statements made by the Chief Executive and resolutions passed by Congress as recently as 15 months ago,” and upon the basis of public opinion polls showing the American public to be friendly to the idea of establishing the Jewish national home “that our government would have taken the leadership in this matter as she has done in other international matters.” Instead of the United States, Silver said, “our spokesmen seem to be Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Chile.”
Dr. Silver asked that the refugee problem in Europe and the question of the establishment of the Jewish national home not be confused. It would be wonderful, he said, if the United States would open its doors to Jewish and other immigration, but the criticized those who “drag a red herring across the trail” by demanding to know why Britain should allow free Jewish immigration into Palestine when the United States does not allow Jewish immigration to this country. The United States, he pointed out, “has never been the Jewish national home” while Britain was committed under the Palestine Mandate to keeping the doors of Palestine open to free Jewish immigration.
Commenting on the Truman Doctrine, Silver said that it would be “a great mistake to conclude that the need for stopping Communist penetration into the Middle East…has to be accomplished by the sacrifice of the Jewish national home.” It would be a fallacy, he said, to appease the Arabs in the hopes that they would become a bulmark against Russian influence in the Middle East because “the Arab rulers fear Communism and Russia far more than they fear the Jewish national home.”
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.
