Arabs launched a six-hour mortar attack on Tel Aviv from Jaffa last night while the 77-member Zionist. Actions Committee was discussing the attitude which Palestine Jewry is to take towards the American trusteeship 1 and debating whether the Jews of Palestine can depend on the good will of the Western Powers at the present time.
The shelling began shortly before midnight, causing damage to a number of buildings and injuring several people. A spokesman for Haganah charged today that British troops joined the attack, using artillery. The Actions Committee, nevertheless, continued its session until the early morning hours.
During the debate, the left-wing opposition in the Committee maintained that Palestine is only a single phase in the struggle now developing between the Western the Eastern blocs. The left-wing delegates insisted that Jewish aims run counter-British imperialism. However, David Ben Gurion told the session that the Jews “must not rely on any single power.” Pointing out that there can be peace between the East and the West, he said that “our place in the international field is to seek peace between nations,”
BEN GURION OUTLINES IMMEDIATE JEWISH OBJECTIVES
Appealing for total Jewish support for the United Nations, Ben Gurion listed the following immediate objectives of the Jewish people: 1. Creation of a Jewish state; 2. Securing Jewish-Arab agreement; 3. International peace through the U.N. lie said America’s reversal on partition was not sufficient reason for the Jews to abandon the United Nations, and characterized the U.S. policy shift as a greater plow to the U.N. than to the Jews.
Asserting that the Arabs could not defeat the Jewish military forces, he declared: “Once we have proved to them that we can neither be destroyed nor dominated, that we cannot be treated like Jaws have been treated in other countries, there will a change in the Arab attitude and a ‘possibility for understanding. Only then will the idea of Arab Jewish cooperation become a reality.”
Other speakers at the session included Mrs. Goldie Meirson, who said that the struggle in Palestine was the responsibility of Jews all over the world, and stressed the need for “manpower and practical means” for Palestine’s Jews, and Dr. Aryeh Altman, Revisionist leader, who proposed that a Jewish state be set up in the whole of Palestine, since the U.N. partition boundaries no longer apply. Dr. Moshe Sneh insisted that the Zionist movement “must give up its illusion that the Western world will help in achieving its aim of a Jewish state.”
Earlier, the Actions Committee reviewed the problem of bringing the Jewish dissident groups now operating in Palestine under nations discipline prior to reaching an agreement with them. Laborite delegates expressed opposition to such an agreement, but all other representatives are in favor of setting up a central Jewish authority.
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.
