Pointing to the 4,000,000 European Jews who have been murdered by the Germans, the 64th annual convention of the American Federation of Labor yesterday adopted a resolution urging that steps be taken to reopen Palestine to unlimited immigration by Jewish refugees.
The resolution also called for the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth, and urged the United States Government to take speedy action on the Palestine question “in conformity with the as yet unfulfilled pledges to the Jewish people and with the present needs of the Jews in Europe.”
Earlier in the convention, Israel Mereminski, American representative of the Histadruth, the Palestine Federation of Labor, addressed the delegates, bringing greetings from the workers of Palestine. Mr. Mereminski asked the A.F., of L. to press for measures to aid the Jews in Europe. “We do not want to continue to be the people with the largest numbers of civilians killed by the enemies of mankind,” he said. “We cannot, we must not, continue to be the people chosen for homelessness, wandering, and persecution.”
The alterations in the text of the Palestine Resolution made by the House Foreign Affairs Committee before it approved the bill on Wednesday were hailed here today by Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism. The committee struck out the word “Jewish” from the phrase “democratic Jewish Commonwealth,” and deleted another phrase urging the United States Government to “take appropriate measures” to secure establishment of a commonwealth.
“In its present form,” Mr. Rosenwald said, “the resolution represents a declaration of good-will by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and of its opposition to the discriminatory character of the British White Paper, which excluded Jews as Jews from further immigration into Palestine. A clear notice is here given that our legislators are ready to express their humanitarian concern. At the same time they are unwilling to take a position on the political involvements of a ‘Jewish’ political commonwealth or state.”
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