American Jewish Conference Deplores Withdrawal of American Jewish Committee

The American Jewish Conference, through its interim committee, today issued a statement deploring the withdrawal of the American Jewish Committee from the Conference and emphasizing that the door has been left open for the return of the Committee.

“Through its action, the American Jewish Committee has isolated itself from the American Jewish Community at the most perilous hour in the history of our people,” the statement reads. “Its reaction will be deeply deplored and resented by millions of Jews, concerned with the need for organized collaboration in this desperate moment, united through the American Jewish Conference in a program looking to the rescue of the Jewish people from destruction and to the assurance of their continued existence as a free people in a free world.

“This act of withdrawal,” the statement continues, “is the more unjustifiable in that, prior to the sessions of the American Jewish Conference, the conditions of the American Jewish Committee for its entry were accepted, without, however, infringing on the central principle of seeking, through democratic processes, to secure agreement on a program of action in the area of post-war rehabilitation and the implementation of the Jewish rights with reference to Palestine.”

The statement concedes the legal rights of any organization within the American Jewish Conference to withdraw. It points out, however, that “the exercise of that right is morally indefensible when it involves the arbitrary disrupting of unity only newly achieved, too long deferred and imperatively needed.” It challenges the allegation that the differences with respect to the Palestine resolution were the basic reasons for the American Jewish Committee’s withdrawal. It expresses the belief that the American Jewish Committee’s decision to withdraw “would appear to have been dictated by its determination to maintain an independent course of action without public responsibility to the organized Jewish community.”

THIS VIEW, SAYS THE STATEMENT, IS BASED ON THREE FACTS:

1. That apart from the Palestine Resolution, ten other resolutions were adopted after four days of deliberation, seven with respect to rehabilitation at the end of the war and three with respect to an immediate program of rescue. On these there was complete accord on the part of all the delegates, including the three representatives of the American Jewish Committee.

2. That even with respect to the Palestine Resolution, the American Jewish Committee was in accord with certain portions of it, and dissented from the Jewish Commonwealth idea primarily on the basis of the timeliness of projecting the issue at this time.

3. That the President of the American Jewish Committee at the sessions, in expressing his dissents on the Palestine Resolution, expressed the view “that we can still cooperate for the cause of Jewry within the great area in which we found accord and agreement.”

Charging that “the American Jewish Committee has introduced divisiveness in the councils of American Jewry, which is calculated to impair the effectiveness of the efforts on behalf of the Jewish people in the hour of its greatest need,” the statement asserts: “The American Jewish Committee has chosen the path of separatism, a course which it is still not too late for it to abandon.” At the same time it declared that the work of the Conference in implanting the resolutions adopted in the three areas of immediate rescue, post-war rehabilitation and the implementation of Jewish rights to Palestine will not be retarded. The statement rejected the charge of the Committee that any of the resolutions adopted by the Conference involve diminution of loyalty to our country.