Agudah Welcomes “distinguished Moslem Leaders” to Congress and Repudiates All Suspicion That Jews De

Welcoming the “distinguished Moslem leaders from all over the world”, who have come to Jerusalem to attend the Moslem Congress, the Agudath Israel has issued a statement here today repudiating all suspicion that Jews desire to infringe the Moslem Holy Places, and reasserting that the Jews have no designs whatever on the Mosque el Aqsa or on any place in the Temple area, merely asking to be allowed, like their ancestors, to worship at the Wailing Wall from which the Shechina has never departed.

We hope, the statement concludes, that the Congress will bring peace and promote the prosperity and happiness of all the inhabitants of the Holy City, and the land which God has chosen.

THE ZIONIST REPUDIATION OF ALL DESIGNS ON MOSLEM HOLY PLACES IN PALESTINE.

Last month, Dr. Arlossoroff made a statement in Jerusalem on behalf of the Jewish Agency repudiating all suspicion of Jewish designs on the Moslem Holy Places in Palestine, in view of the Moslem Holy Places agitation revived by the Grand Mufti’s Party in connection with the Moslem Congress.

In the light of past experience still fresh in everybody’s memory, Dr. Arlossoroff’s statement, given very briefly by cable in the J.T.A. Bulletin at the time said, it is superfluous to dwell upon the pernicious effects which such a campaign may be able to produce, both in Palestine and other countries. I am not speaking to those who are manufacturing and broadcasting these statements. It is useless to speak to them. But I speak to the thinking Moslems in all countries who are still able to listen with an open mind and to discern falsehood from truth. For their benefit I wish to recapitulate the story of the policy of the Zionist movement towards the problem of Holy Places in Palestine as expressed on various occasions by the leaders and official representatives of the Zionist Organisation and of the Jewish population of Palestine.

As early as December 1917, Dr. Arlossoroff recalled, only a month after the Balfour Declaration was issued, Mr. Sokolov, to-day President of the Jewish Agency, speaking at a Zionist demonstration in Manchester, said: “We know that Palestine is full of sanctuaries and Holy Places-holy to the Christian world, holy to Islam, holy to ourselves. Are we blind not to see that there are these places of worship and of veneration? Palestine is the very place where religious conflicts should disappear. There we should meet as brethren, and there we should learn to love others, not merely to tolerate each other. I declared this to the representatives of the great Christian Churches and I can repeat it here”.

A few months later, Dr. Arlossoroff recalled, Dr. Weizmann, who had gone to Palestine as the head of the first Zionist Commission speaking at an official banquet at the Governorate in Jerusalem on April 27th., 1918, said, according to newspaper reports: “The City of Jerusalem is for Jews a holy shrine. For that reason, if for that alone, the Jews are able to respect the sentiment of others for whom Jerusalem is sacred. They wish to interfere in no way with the Holy Places to which the hearts of Moslems and Christians turn with reverence.”

The first official statement on the subject addressed by the Zionist Organisation to the League of Nations was embodied in a memorandum submitted to the Council in July 1922. This memorandum contains the following passages: “With equal emphasis does the Zionist Organisation categorically deny that the Jews contemplate or have ever contemplated the smallest interference with the religious traditions and customs of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine or with the Holy Places. There has been no attempt at such interference. There will and can be none. The Jews are not so ignorant as not to be fully conscious of the profound veneration with which the Holy Land is regarded by adherents of other creeds, and in particular by the entire Christian world. The Jews have from the outset recognised the Christian and Moslem Holy Places as sacrosanct and inviolable. They indignantly repudiate the injurious and wholly unfounded suggestion that they desire to trespass upon them or to claim any voice in questions relating to their maintenance or their custody.”

Even after the unfortunate incident at the Kotel Kaaravi on the Day of Atonement in 1928, when the Wailing all issue became acute, the Zionist Organisation submitted to the Permanent Mandates Commission a petition dated October 12th., 1928, in which the following sentence occurs: “The Executive wish emphatically to repudiate as false and libellous the rumours which have been circulated that it is the intention of the Jewish people to menace the inviolability of the Moslem Holy Place which encloses the Mosque of Aqsa and the Mosque of Omar”.

In connection with the same ill-omened event, Dr. Arlossoroff went on, the Vaad Leumi published an open letter to the Moslems of Palestine in which the following statement appears: “We hereby declare emphatically and sincerely that no Jew has ever thought of encroaching upon the rights of Moslems over their own Holy Places. We call upon our Arab brethren and their responsible leaders to disperse the poisonous clouds of false rumours which have recently been circulated and to create possibilities for constructive co-operation for the benefit of the country and all the inhabitants in the place of hostility and dispute”.

Thus it came about, Dr. Arlossoroff said, that when early in November 1928 the question of the Wailing Wall incident was raised in the British House of Commons, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Amery) was able to make the following statement: “I am in a position to give an absolute assurance that no question as to the ownership of the Wall has been raised by the Jews and that they have no intention of asking for anything inconsistent with the inviolability of the Moslem Holy Places, which is unreservedly acknowledged”.

Unfortunately, however, Dr. Arlossoroff continued, the insidious agitation continued with what results I need not recall. But even these results did not induce our movement to swerve from its established course of having scrupulous regard to the religious susceptibilities of others. On November 6th., 1929, when the atmosphere in the country was still tense, the Zionist Executive issued the following declaration: “In view of the fact that the Jewish aspirations to secure the conditions necessary for free and undisturbed worship at the Kotel-Maaravi, known as the Wailing Wall, have been misrepresented as involving designs to encroach upon the Haram Area, the Zionist Organisation desires to reaffirm its repeated declarations unreservedly recognising the inviolability of the Moslem Holy Places”.