The voice of the American continent was heard for the first time today at the U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, when spokesmen or Panama and Uruguay made impassioned appeals for adoption of the partition recommendations of the UNSCOP majority. They spoke after two Iraqi delegates had bitterly assailed Zionism, likening it to Nazism.
If their statements can be taken as an indication of the attitude of the United States to the UNSCOP report–which many do on the assumption that Panama, especially, would not express any opinion in international affairs contradictory to that of the United States–then it can be expected that when the American delegation finally defines its attitude to the UNSCOP recommendations this week, it will also favor partition as a basis for a United Nations decision on the ultimate status of Palestine.
It was considered significant in U.N. circles that members of the American delegation, while unwilling to comment previously on statements made by other speakers at the Ad Hoc Committee, termed both the Latin American statements “clever” and added that the address by the Uruguayan delegate was “brilliant and impassioned.”
URUGUAYAN DELEGATE ASKS IMMEDIATE ADMISSION OF 30,000 JEWISH CHILDREN
The Uruguayan representative, Dr. Enrique Fabregat, was more outspoken in his hour-long speech than Panamain delegate Dr. Juan Rivera Reyes. In addition {SPAN}(##){/SPAN} emphasizing the rights of the Jews to a state of their own in Palestine he proposed the immediate admission to Palestine of 30,000 Jewish children from Europe, together with their parents and guardians, as well as the immediate admission of all pregnant Jewish women who are in camps for displaced persons in Europe. His speech has a moving plea to the world to consider the horrors which the Jews have undergone in Europe, and to prevent them from undergoing similar-horrors in the future by establishing them in a state of their own.
The delegate from Panama, indicating his support of the UNSCOP majority recommendations, said that the modern Jewish part of the city of Jerusalem should be left in the proposed Jewish state. He reminded the United Nations that the solution of partition had been successfully resorted to in the Irish and Indian problem, and he urged the U.N. to put an end to the present Palestinian deadlock.
Emphasizing that the majority of the population in Panama is Catholic and that his country has no material interests in Palestine and can, therefore, take an impartial attitude on the Palestine problem, Dr. Reyes said that in the view of his government the Arabs in the Jewish state will not suffer since they will be living there under guaranteed minority rights.
He pointed out that Palestine, with an area approximately equal to that of Belgium or Holland, had a much smaller population. The government of Panama, he said, does not agree with those who maintained that an increase in the Jewish population of Palestine would threaten the neighboring Arab countries.
IRAQI SAYS PROBLEM OF DP’S NOT GERMANE TO PALESTINE ISSUE
Today’s session opened with an address by General Nuri As-Said, chairman of the Iraq delegation, who asked the U.N. to “disregard resolutely” the problem of the displaced Jews since this is a matter which should be handled by the International Refugee Organization established by the United Nations. He asked the following:
1. Britain should arrange at once to hand over her power in Palestine to a provisional Arab Government.
2. Britain should at once commence to remove from Palestine all “alien, subversive and criminal elements” who entered the country during the British administration.
3. The United Nations should recognize the rights of “the legitimate Palestine inhabitants” to have their own independent government under a democratic constitution.
Bitterly criticizing the UNSCOP recommendations, the head of the Iraq delegation said that “they propose to create in Palestine an administration more fantastic that anything imagined in the ‘Arabian Nights entertainment’ or the fantasies of H.G. Wells.” The UNSCOP recommendations, he declared, have introduced a “new conception” of independence and made the Palestine issue more complicated.
Severely attacking Zionism and demanding the expulsion from Palestine of “undesirable” Jews, Gen. Nuri As-Said referred to a speech by Prime Minister Attlee in Commons on May 1, 1946, asserting that Attlee declared at that time that before Britain could take any action to implement the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, it was necessary that all illegal forces be disarmed and that the terrorists be suppressed.
“It is true,” the Iraq delegate said, “that the Jewish Agency, as Dr. Silver has stated, has denounced the activities of the Zionist terrorist gangsters in Palestine. But the Jewish Agency openly beasts that it possesses a large well-armed force known as the Haganah which they claim is fully prepared to take over the administration of all Palestine. For the Jewish Agency with such an armed force at its disposal to content itself with mere verbal denunciations of the terrorists reveals the innate hypocricy and duplicity of the Zionists.”
Iraq Foreign Minister Fadhil Jamali who followed Nuri As-Said demanded “Palestine for the Palestinians.” Palestine, he said, does not belong to the Jews of the world or to the Christians or Moslems of the world, except spiritually.
“Palestine belongs to the Palestinians alone, just as France belongs to the French and the French alone, and just as England belongs to the English and the English alone,” Jamali declared.
“I submit that we must apply the rule of ‘Palestine for the Palestinians’ and recognize the right of the Palestinians to their home. If we deviate from this fundamental international law, we would be moving far astray in our attempt to solve the Palestinian problem.”
ACCUSES ZIONISTS OF USING DOLLAR DIPLOMACY
Charging the Zionists with “invoking the policy of dollar diplomacy and extraterritorial rights, the Iraq Foreign Minister argued that “economic development of another people’s country does not entitle a foreigner to political rights therein.” He added that “the fact that the Zionists, through American money and western
The Iraq delegate then urged the U.S. Government to take measures “to ensure that its citizens are not permitted to send men, money, arms and ships to Palestine to disturb peace through terrorism and illegal immigration.” He also asked the government “to close the schools established in the U.S. to instruct Zionists in modern ?arfare and terrorist activities.”
Comparing Zionism to Nazism, the Iraq Foreign Minister said that a distinction should be made between Zionism and Judaism. Judaism, he said, is a world religion which is truly connected to Palestine like Christianity and Islam. Zionism, on the other hand, is a modern political movement of an aggressive and virulent nature which has nothing to do with Palestine except in its aim to penetrate the MiddleJ East, using Palestine as a gate. Zionism is one of those “isms” which has a good deal of Canaticism and chauvinism, he added.
“As time goes on,” he continued, “the world will more and more appreciate the harm done to Jewry and to international peace and harmony through Zionism. Ideologically it is a 19th century nationalism very much like Nazism, based on race mythology mixed with religion. Practically, it follows the same methods of propaganda and the same method of aggression and penetration as those of the Nazis. Thus it is most important that Judaism should be separated from Zionism. Fortunately, many Jews are not Zionists.”
The delegate from Uruguay, who was the last speaker, took issue with the Arab allegations. He also opposed the idea of adopting, for the time being, only the eleven unanimous recommendations of the UNSCOP report. The adoption of these recommendations without settling the question of the ultimate status of Palestine would lead only to another neutral position or termination of the Mandate, for which purpose, he said, it would not have been necessary to call a special session of the General Assembly or to create the present Ad Hoc Committee.
FABREGAT ASKS REVISION OF BOUNDARIES RECOMMENDED BY UNSCOP
Vigorously supporting partition, Fabregat opposed the inclusion of important Jewish settlements, such as Nahariah and others in western Galilee, as well as the inclusion of the Arab cities of Jaffa and Beersheba in the proposed Jewish state. He also proposed that Jerusalem be divided into Jewish and Arab sections, similar to the Jaffa and Tel Aviv arrangement.
Speaking movingly of the extermination of 6,000,000 Jews in Europe, and particularly of the child victims, Prof. Fabregat said he spoke for the 30,000 survivors, not because they are Jewish children, but as “children” born of love and whose future is a responsibility of humanity.
Answering the Iraq assertion that the UNSCOP partition proposal introduced a new form of independence, Fabregat declared that an idea should not be rejected because it is new and stressed that the U.N. cannot stick too closely to tradition.
Fabregat said that the creation of a Jewish state is the legal and logical consequence of the Mandate, and that while Jews and Arabs come from the same Semitic branch, their ways of life and degrees of advancement are so different as to require separate states.
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.
