The Palestine government was justified in granting less immigration certificates than the Jewish Agency asked because the Agency acted in bad faith, asserts Near East and India, influential publication, in an editorial appearing in today’s issue.
The publication comments as follows:
“The Jewish demands ignored the fact that every year between two and three thousand Jewish children and twice as many Arab children entered the labor market; present arrangements for the reception and accommodation of Jewish immigrants were inadequate for the numbers at present authorized to enter the country.
“As a basis of its claims for immigration certificates for permanent settlers, the Jewish Agency included purely seasonal requirements of the labor market, which could be and were met by the employment of town workers. The Government could not bring itself to regard the boom conditions in the building trade as a permanent feature of the economic life of the country.
NOMINATED PROFESSIONALS
“The most serious charge brought by the Government’s representative against the Jewish Agency, however, was that it ‘had frequently nominated under the labor schedules professional men and non-manual immigrants instead of working-men,’ and he added:
” ‘A selection of immigrants more in conformity with the requirements of the labor market would have mitigated instead of accentuated the shortage of labor.’ All those who believe that the future of Palestine as well as the satisfactory development of the Jewish National Home depends on the harmonious cooperation of the Jewish Agency and the Government have been exercised in mind over the immigration controversy and the ill-feeling that it has engendered in Jewry against the British authorities.
“The conviction that the Government is shown to have entertained that the Agency has been guilty of bad faith puts a different complexion on the matter and must be held to have justified the ruthless cutting down of the Agency’s claim for labor certificates. No satisfactory understanding can be based on sharp practice, and the best that can now be hoped for is that the Agency, whose action in a matter of this kind will not have had the full endorsement of the Zionist Organization with full knowledge of the facts, will have decided in the face of the Government’s accusation, to be more scrupulous in the compilation of its claims and in the selection of immigrants under the Labor Schedule.
“That a better atmosphere prevails in regard to the subject is indicated by the considerable increase in the volume of Jewish immigration to Palestine expected in the next few months. At the same time the problem of illicit immigration remains, and it is unfortunate that in this matter the Government not only is having to cope with the offending immigrants but is also up against a considerable proportion of the Jewish population who connive at and conceal from the knowledge of the authorities the illegal immigration.”
EARLY FRENCH JEWS
The town of Joigny, France, had a flourishing Jewish community in the twelfth century.
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